Los Angeles — You would think that Los Angeles, of all places, would know how to handle a catastrophe.
Monica Almeida/The New York Times
An eleven mile stretch of Interstate 405 will be closed down for 53 hours in July in Los Angeles.
But in just over a week, 11 miles of Interstate 405 — the north-south spine of the West Side of Los Angeles, which carries 500,000 cars every weekend over the Sepulveda Pass into the San Fernando Valley — is going to shut down for 53 hours, from late Friday night to early Monday morning. No cars, trucks or motorcycles will be allowed, to make way for the latest phase in a $1 billion widening project for a highway that serves as an unhappy second home for commuters during rush hours.
And they are calling it Carmageddon. City officials are warning of a traffic nightmare, urging people to stay home or get out of town with pronouncements that have taken on an increasingly alarming tone. “EXPECT BIG DELAY” reads the warning on electronic billboards on highways and streets from Bakersfield to San Diego. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has an official “Countdown to the Closure” clock on its Web site, ticking down to the weekend of July 16 and 17.
The Los Angeles Police Department, leaving no electronic stone unturned, asked Lady Gaga to post a warning on her Twitter feed, which has 11.4 million followers and is usually more concerned with promoting “Born This Way” than a highway. There is a Carmageddon Facebook page and an all-things Carmageddon Web site, with maps, videos, a Twitter feed and local businesses offering deals to people who stay home. (The tagline: “The Price You Pay to Live in L.A.”) And there is an ever-growing list of hashtags to help Twitter account users track the impending crisis.
Kajon Cermak, the traffic reporter for KCRW in Santa Monica, said she was considering doing what any rational person would do on that weekend: leaving. “I was talking to my husband, and he said we should get out of here and go to Portland,” Ms. Cermak said. “The traffic is going to be bumper to bumper. Everybody is talking about it.”
Which is hardly a surprise considering how terrifying the warnings have sounded.
“If you think the 405 is gridlocked during the week, you haven’t seen anything yet,” Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa said by telephone last week. “My message is to stay home. Or go on vacation. Walk. Go on a bike. But do not get in your car and go anywhere near the West Side. It’s going to be a mess.”
Bill Rosendahl, a City Council member from the area, said, “This is truly a potential paralysis moment.”
Of course, the big question is whether all this could end up being the Los Angeles equivalent of the Y2K crisis-that-never-came. There are plenty of people here who recall what took place after similarly alarming traffic warnings before the 1984 Summer Olympics.
“The message got out, and the freeway was never better,” said Borja Leon, the deputy mayor for transportation. “The traffic flow was incredible.”
But there are many more cars on the road here than 25 years ago. Ms. Cermak said she was struck by Interstate 405’s routine gridlock on weekends.
Preparations for this potential traffic catastrophe have been plentiful. Hospitals are lining up hotel and dormitory rooms for employees. The Los Angeles Emergency Operations Center, a high-tech command post built to manage during a natural disaster, will be in full operation, the mayor said.
The Getty Center — perched on a hillside overlooking the highway, and a top draw for tourists — is closing for the weekend, the first time it has done so since opening in 1997, said Ron Hartwig, its spokesman. Santa Monica is permitting farmers who come down for the Saturday farmers’ market to leave their trucks in parking lots through the weekend and is asking homeowners who have space to “host a farmer” through the closing.
One enterprising helicopter company is advertising trips from the Valley to the West Side — “Enjoy the ride over the Sepulveda Pass” — for $150 a person. Movie theaters near the roadway are promising free popcorn to draw nervous patrons through the door.
Los Angeles officials say they are only doing the responsible thing in issuing the ever-more-apocalyptic warnings of what lies in store. Local businesses are not so sure, worried that all this will do is drive away customers on what should be a busy summer weekend, while making it tougher for employees to get to work.
“We have elected officials standing up at the podium saying, ‘Get out of town, get away, don’t come here!’ ” said Jay Handal II, the manager of San Gennaro Cafe in Brentwood. “That’s probably the most business-unfriendly thing for them to be telling people. They should be promoting the local neighborhood, instead of telling people to get the hell away.”
The real fear is that come Monday morning, when the real crush of regular weekday traffic comes, the contractors will not be finished with the work. Though, perhaps fear is not the right word. “Oh, if that happens, it’s like, oh, L.A., we get our first snow day!” Ms. Cermak said.
© 2011nytimes.com
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