LOS ANGELES — When the sun rises above Los Angeles today, residents in this car-dependent, traffic-choked city will see a rare sight: a 10-mile stretch of one of the nation’s busiest freeways turned into a virtual ghost road.
Interstate 405, a freeway normally so clogged that locals joke that its name is shorthand for “traffic that moves no faster than 4 or 5 miles an hour,” is closing for 53 hours for a major construction project.
As crews worked to get the freeway open in time for Monday morning’s rush-hour, residents have been making plans for weeks to stay off local roads, lest they trigger what officials dubbed “Carmageddon.” Such an event could back up vehicles from the 405 to surface streets and other freeways, causing a domino effect that could paralyze much of the city.
With warnings having been broadcast through television, radio, social media and flashing freeway signs as far away as San Francisco, much of the city’s nearly 4 million residents appear ready to stay off the roads.
If they do, there will be no shortage of staycation activities awaiting them.
They can snag free popcorn at movie theaters along the 405 or drop in on Michael Jackson’s dermatologist for 25-percent-off Botox injections so that frazzled commuters won’t look quite so frazzled.
JetBlue Airways offered special nonstop flights between Long Beach and Burbank for today priced at just $4 each way, taxes and fees included. The 600 seats for the four flights sold out within three hours on Wednesday, the airline said.
For those wanting a laugh, Grammy-winning humorist Stan Freberg plans to visit a mall just off the freeway to sign copies of his latest CD, “Songs in the Key of Freberg,” which features a song called “Gridlock.” That is, if he can get there.
“We could end up just toodling around in traffic in our Prius, playing ‘Gridlock’ ourselves,” he said of himself and his wife, Hunter.
Along with all the gimmicky promotions and attempts to cash in (“I Survived Carmageddon” T-shirts are being sold all over the place), there have also been months of planning.
Construction crews have been gearing up, but so have police, fire and medical officials seeking to ensure that everything goes smoothly. Or, if it doesn’t, to ensure they are prepared to handle any emergency.
Bulldozers and other heavy equipment needed to demolish a section of a 50-year-old bridge as part of a $1 billion freeway-widening project were already in place Friday, hours before the 405’s midnight closure.
Sections of the bridge’s pilings that are being torn out had been marked and prepped in advance.
The city fire department put two dozen additional engines, fire companies and ambulances into service, placing them in neighborhoods that firefighters might have a hard time getting to from jammed roadways.
“Our biggest concern is gridlock, obviously,” Battalion Chief Chuck Butler said Friday. “There are a lot of areas over in west L.A. and the San Fernando Valley that we expect to be impacted due to the closure.”
Numbers
53 Number of hours that 10 miles of Interstate 405 will be closed in Los Angeles for construction work
500,000 Vehicles that use the closed section of I-405 on a typical summer weekend
