The Other Shoe to Drop (on Wilshire and the 405)
If you thought your commuter problems to UCLA would be over once the President left town this morning, consider the following from LA County Supervisor Yaroslavsky:
…Long-running closures of the 405 Freeway’s Wilshire Boulevard ramps are set to begin on Friday, June 22, bringing fresh challenges to an intersection that’s already among the nation’s worst. Anxious residents and employees in the area have been girding for the start of the ramp work for months. Some online wags have dubbed it The Rampture, while others who live nearby refer to it ominously as “the next shoe to drop.”
Whatever you call it, the work is needed to construct sweeping, 30-foot-high flyover ramps that will improve traffic flow and safety at the perennially jammed intersection… Currently, 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 out of commission for 90 days starting June 22. Work on the other ramps will proceed in segments after that, with planned closures ranging from 90 days to 14 days. Delays and detours are expected as workers demolish and rebuild the ramps, working around the clock to finish the job.
In all, work on the Wilshire ramps is expected to take about a year. …The June 22 start date was chosen, in part, because it will come after the end of the academic year for LAUSD and private schools in the area. The work also will be getting underway following the mid-June flurry of commencement activity at UCLA…
Full story at http://zev.lacounty.gov/405-report/get-ready-to-ramp-up-on-wilshire. A video on the ramp reconstruction is at:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-5AF73Ce8g&w=320&h=195]