Month: February 2014

L.A. traffic’s teachable moments

Barbour, right, confers with a colleague during Jamzilla. Photo/Los Angeles Times

If they gave college credit for navigating the massive construction project on the 405 Freeway, Los Angeles would be well into its post-graduate studies. And Mike Barbour would be our road-weary faculty advisor.

As for big tests, well, the latest one came last weekend in the form of the 80-hour potential tie-up known as Jamzilla—and Barbour thinks we aced it.

“The public listens, I think that’s obvious,” said Barbour, whose actual job is managing the freeway improvements project for Metro. “If it would have been less than 60% traffic diversion, we would have had problems probably for the entire weekend.”

In other words, we stayed away from the construction zone in droves over the long President’s Day weekend—an outcome that wasn’t at all certain going in.

Dozens of work crews working on the northbound 405 put down thousands of tons of paving material—enough to pave a 9-mile sidewalk from Santa Monica to LAX. But only on the holiday Monday did traffic shows any signs of significant back-ups, and those were relatively short-lived and topped off at delays of about 45 minutes, Barbour estimated.

Shortly after Jamzilla was announced, Barbour acknowledged that he had his doubts about whether the driving public had become too jaded to heed the stay-away messages this time, given how smoothly everything had gone during two previous epic closures, Carmageddon and Carmageddon II.

Now, as he reflects on all three highly-publicized closures, he believes that the earlier experiences actually helped individual motorists realize how much their behavior could affect the outcome overall.

“I think they got it. They saw the benefit in the past of staying away, and this kind of carried through to this one. I don’t think we were crying wolf,” Barbour said. “People are not going, ‘Aw crap, they’re just making this stuff up.’ They’re thinking, ‘Yeah, it’s real. We’ll respond appropriately.’ ”

In fact, he believes there could be long-lasting lessons in traffic management and mass communication to grow out of the 405 Project experiences.

“This is actually kind of an amazing thing as far as dealing with traffic in L.A. Can we interact with the public on a regular basis to address these closures or impacts? Can we get them to start adjusting their habits and patterns? As things develop, can we get them to be responsive? Carmageddon and Jamzilla showed we can,” Barbour said. “And I think that’s a great thing. You could imagine what you could do with that if you could be more interactive on a regular basis with the public. Getting them to change their driving patterns and habits, that would be awesome.”

Now, with the “big milestone” of Jamzilla past and just one more potential 55-hour closure of the southbound 405 still in the works, Barbour is seeing the light at the end of the mega-project.

“Substantial completion,” meaning that people can drive the freeway and all of its improvements, including a new 10-mile northbound carpool lane, is set for this summer.

“Hopefully we’ll get it done the early part of the summer. All I can tell you is that there’s a real push. We are all just focused. Everybody’s pulling in the right direction,” Barbour said. “The sooner we get done, our lives get so much easier, and I think more importantly, the community is sick of this job. They’re sick of the impacts. That’s why we’re trying to do everything we can to minimize those right now.

“It’s been 5 years for me,” he added. “I’ve lived through thick and thin on this one.”

Jamzilla’s massive paving operation took over much of the 405. Metro photo by Gary Leonard

Posted 2/20/14

Jamzilla could be a monster

If too many motorists converge on the 405 this weekend, Jamzilla will live up to its name.

With officials keeping a close eye on the weather report and a couple of major sporting events, the gargantuan road-paving and lane-painting operation known as Jamzilla roars into action on the 405 Freeway this weekend.

In the days leading up to the 80-hour construction marathon, which runs from February 14-18, the weather forecast has been of more than casual interest. That’s because a cornerstone of the planned work—a costly, fast-hardening polyester paving process that allows the contractor to move far more quickly than would be possible with conventional paving materials—requires temperatures above 50 degrees (and below 100 degrees) to work properly. With a warming trend pushing overnight lows into the 50s, officials held a “go/no-go” meeting on Wednesday and decided to proceed with the effort, which is a key milestone in the long-running project to bring a 10-mile northbound carpool lane and other improvements to the 405.

But the thermometer hasn’t been the only preoccupation as Jamzilla approaches.

Officials also are worried about the human factor.

While L.A. sailed through two previous weekend-long “Carmageddons” in which the entire 405 was shut down, this time around may be a different story—paradoxically, because the freeway will actually have a couple of northbound lanes open during the daytime all weekend long, as well as all of the southbound lanes.

“When the freeway is closed, it’s easy for someone to make the decision. But with lane reductions, it means there’s always a chance. There’ll be some people who’ll just go there and see what happens,” said Edward Yu, who directs the city of Los Angeles’ Automated Traffic Surveillance and Control Center (ATSAC), which will be closely monitoring the flow of traffic as Jamzilla unfolds.

Also, unlike during either of the previous Carmageddons, there are a couple of big sports events scheduled in the area and expected to draw thousands of spectators: the Northern Trust Open at the Riviera Country Club, starting Thursday and running through Sunday, February 16, and the UCLA-University of Utah basketball game at Pauley Pavilion on Saturday.

The Getty Center, meanwhile, is open for visitors and showcasing a Queen Victoria film series this weekend, along with ongoing exhibitions. Another Sepulveda Pass institution, the Skirball Cultural Center, is offering its regular weekend lineup of programs.

Metro, which is running the 405 Project in conjunction with Caltrans, estimates it will need to reduce the regular traffic volume on the 405 by two-thirds just to keep things moving normally.

Anything else, they warned this week, could produce an “80-hour-long Sigalert.”

“If we don’t have enough people staying off the freeway, we will have long congestion lines. That’s guaranteed,” said Metro spokesman Dave Sotero. “One-and-a-half or two hours stuck on the freeway is no fun for anybody—and it could be even worse.”

He’s not just blowing smoke. A shorter, but otherwise similar paving operation last March, billed as “Son of Carmageddon,” caused lengthy traffic jams on the 405, Sepulveda Boulevard and beyond.

“We had northbound traffic backed up to the 90. The 10 was gridlocked in both directions leading to the 405,” recalled Sotero, who memorialized the occasion with a frame grab of all the red lines depicting clogged roadways on that day’s Caltrans QuickMap.

It doesn’t have to be that way this weekend.

Anyone who doesn’t need to drive should make it a car-free weekend, Metro advises. Those who do need to travel should steer clear of the construction zone and choose other freeways to get around.

And everybody who plans to be in motion anywhere near the 405 this weekend, including on the Presidents’ Day holiday Monday, should make it a point to be up to date on exactly where and when Jamzilla is taking place.

Full details are here, but in a nutshell, this is what’s happening:

The affected area is a 5.6-mile stretch of the northbound 405 between Getty Center Drive and Ventura Boulevard.

During the daytime hours, three northbound lanes will be closed, with two left open.

At night, all five northbound lanes will be closed.

The entire operation should wrap up in time for back-to-work traffic at 6 a.m. on Tuesday, February 18.

Unfortunately, this is not the final extended closure planned for the project, which is expected to be “substantially completed” and open for driving by summer.

A 55-hour closure of the southbound freeway is now in the planning stages. A date has not yet been set, but K.N. Murthy, Metro’s executive director of transit project delivery, said the upcoming extended shutdown is needed to work on retaining walls, sound walls, shoulder paving and lane restriping.

When the $1 billion-plus project finally reaches the end of the road, it will leave behind the 10-mile-long carpool lane, three rebuilt bridges and some dramatically reconfigured Wilshire “flyover” ramps, along with other improvements.

Another benefit, for transit riders, may in the offing as well.

When the new carpool lane opens this summer, Metro is considering using it to introduce a new rapid bus line between the San Fernando Valley and the Westside. If approved and funded by Metro’s Board of Directors, the new line could offer service from the Valley to Westwood beginning this summer, and would extend further south to connect with the Expo Line when the second phase of the light rail opens to Santa Monica in 2015.

Posted 2/13/14