Lots of weekend closures ahead

The Wilshire ramps will be undergoing a year-long reconstruction. Photo/Gary Leonard for Metro

The mega-project to reconstruct the Wilshire ramps to the 405 Freeway doesn’t start till next week, but things will be plenty busy after hours in the area over the next few days.

Starting tonight, Thursday, June 14, Sepulveda Boulevard will be closed at 9 p.m. between Getty Center Drive and Constitution Avenue so that the boulevard can be restriped to allow two lanes of traffic to travel in each direction. Sepulveda will close again on Friday, June 15, at 9 p.m., and reopen at 11 a.m. Saturday. More details are here.

Next up is Wilshire Boulevard, which will be closed in both directions at Sepulveda from 11 p.m. Saturday until 8:30 a.m. Sunday. All of the Wilshire ramps to the freeway will be closed as well from 11 p.m. Saturday till 11 a.m. Sunday. And Sepulveda will be reduced to a single lane from Ohio  to Constitution from 9 p.m. Saturday until 9 a.m. Sunday.

These closures are needed so that Southern California Edison can remove overhead power lines along Sepulveda. The boulevard is expected to become a primary alternate route through the area when major construction work on the Wilshire ramps begins on June 22.

The Wilshire ramps work, expected to take about a year in all, will bring new, 30-foot-high flyover ramps to improve traffic flow and safety at the notoriously congested intersection. As it stands now, vehicles moving on and off the freeway must execute a complicated merge with heavy traffic on Wilshire—a situation the new flyover ramps are intended to alleviate.

The first of eight ramps to close will be the westbound Wilshire on-ramp to the northbound 405 and the northbound 405 off-ramp to westbound Wilshire. Both will be closed for 90 days starting at 9 p.m. on June 22. Work on the other ramps will proceed in segments after that, with planned closures ranging from 90 days to 14 days.

This weekend’s flurry of activity around Wilshire isn’t the only action expected to affect drivers moving through the 405 Project zone.

A little to the north, motorists should also watch out for the weekend-long closure of the southbound offramp to Skirball Center Drive. The offramp will be closed from 7 p.m. Friday, June 15, until 6 a.m. Monday, June 18, so that the west side of the Skirball Bridge can be paved. The closures will be repeated on the weekend of June 22-25.

Posted 6/13/12