The 80-hour Jamzilla on the 405

January 14, 2014 

Officials are urging motorists to stay away from the 405 construction zone on Presidents' Day weekend.

When you’ve been through two Carmageddons, three bridge reconstructions and untold thousands of construction hours, what’s an 80-hour closure on the 405 Project?

It’s Jamzilla—and before you start making any Valentine’s Day evening or Presidents’ Day weekend plans, best take a look at Metro’s upcoming closures of northbound lanes on the 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass.

Three northbound lanes on the 405 will be closed during the daytime hours over the long weekend of February 14-18, and the entire northbound freeway will be closed for overnight work. The connecting ramps to and from the 10 Freeway will be closed as well. Details for Jamzilla are here.

“We’ve named it that because of its potential to create monstrous congestion,” said Diane DuBois, chair of Metro’s Board of Directors, who was among the officials who announced the closure on Tuesday and urged motorists to stay away from the area that weekend.

The closures will allow construction workers to excavate and repave portions of a new, 10-mile northbound carpool lane, one of the primary benefits of the $1 billion-plus project now entering its fifth and final year.

The 80-hour Presidents’ Day weekend closure represents a consolidation of several 55-hour closures that had been planned.

“This closure operation will save significant time and minimize future closure impacts to the community and traveling public,” Metro said in a news release.

Jamzilla may be big, but it’s not the only closure on the horizon. This Thursday, January 16, the southbound 405 will be closed from Valley Vista Boulevard to the southbound Skirball Center Drive on-ramp from midnight to 2 a.m. The northbound freeway then closes from 2:30 a.m. to 5 a.m. from Getty Center Drive to the northbound Skirball Center Drive on-ramp. The closures are needed so that construction workers can pour the deck of the Skirball Bridge, which also will be completely closed from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. More information is here.

Then, on the night of January 18, the southbound freeway will be closed from the 101 Freeway to Getty Center Drive. It’s set to reopen the morning of January 19. Click here for details.

The 405 project is expected to be “substantially completed” by mid-year, meaning that the carpool lane and ramps will be open. Final completion is scheduled by the end of 2014.

Posted 1/14/14

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