SACRAMENTO, CALIF. — Even in Los Angeles, where celebrities dress their pets in designer clothes, a proposal for a $455,000 animal lane on a bridge over Interstate 405 has riled residents who say scarce transportation dollars should not be used to help deer and bobcats while humans remain gridlocked in traffic.
The cost could balloon to $1.4 million if environmentalists can persuade the city to extend the wildlife path, which would be part of the bridge for vehicles and pedestrians, beyond the freeway, officials said.
The plan has split residents of wealthy enclaves, where the impulse to be environmentally correct is clashing with frustration over the tortoiselike pace on area roadways.
Even some activists who have long supported green causes are ridiculing the idea of a special path on the Skirball Center Drive bridge so coyotes and opossums can commute across the Sepulveda Pass.
“What are they going to do, have Dr. Dolittle standing there directing animals to use the bridge?” scoffed Ernest Frankel, a member of a residents group.
Others say that if the state is going to expand I-405 as planned, it has an obligation to help wildlife cross open spaces sliced in half by one of the nation’s busiest freeways.
“In today’s dollars, doing this to improve the quality of open space and solve a serious wildlife issue is a drop in the bucket,” said biologist Paul Edelman. “If we want healthy wild animals in Griffith Park and other open spaces, this is a must.”
The controversy stems from a plan by the California Department of Transportation to replace the Skirball overpass to accommodate the scheduled widening of I-405 and the addition of a carpool lane through three Los Angeles neighborhoods.
Concerned that a wider freeway would make it more difficult for wildlife to cross east and west, the conservancy won a tentative commitment from Caltrans to make the new bridge, which includes lanes for cars, 5 feet wider than originally planned.
A connection between the habitats adjacent to I-405 would help animals flee when disease or fire affects them on either side, Edelman said, and avoid isolating them in a way that leads to inbreeding.
