Dismantling the 405: Be very afraid

The 405 freeway widening project enters a new phase this week, and you're not going to like it. Got to be done, but still — avoid the area if you can. There will be full freeway closures at night this week and next heading up into Sepulveda Pass from the Westside, for restriping of lanes. That's to prepare for a giant "hoe ram" — a crane equipped with a massive jackhammer — to start knocking down the Sunset Boulevard bridge over the freeway. The dismantling occurs chunk by chunk over six to nine loud nights, with the concrete pulverized on the site for reuse. It should take ten months or so to take down and rebuild the southern half of the bridge, then the cycle is repeated on the northern half. If the noise and disruption of that doesn't impress, the DWP also has to rebuild a major water main on the street used to get on and off the freeway at Sunset — a street choked with traffic at the best of times.

When it's all done, the Sunset Blvd. bridge over the 405 will be wider with more-modern on- and off-ramps. In the meantime, adjacent businesses like the Luxe and Angeleno hotels — nearby traffic generators like UCLA and the Getty — and neighbors are preparing for a bad situation. From Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's website:

At the Luxe Hotel Sunset Boulevard, one of two upscale hotels located in the midst of the coming action, employees are used to staging enormous wedding and bar mitzvah receptions in the 300-guest ballroom and catering to the needs of high-profile guests reported to include celebrities such as Charlize Theron and Jennifer Love Hewitt.

But operating a hotel with two massive construction projects just outside the door?

“We are actually, honestly, scared,” says Luxe general manager Seth Horowitz, whose
hotel was the scene of a community meeting earlier this week as members of local neighborhood associations sought information on the projects. Horowitz says he holds out hope that his hotel, along with its nearby counterpart, Hotel Angeleno, can have some influence on the construction timetable as they seek to juggle fully-booked Saturday and Sunday nights and upcoming soirees.

Even at the best of times, getting around the area can be tough. Horowitz said a guest at a “very important event” recently told him about battling rush hour traffic for 1-1/2 hours to reach the hotel from Paul Revere Middle School near Mandeville Canyon Road—less than three miles away.

“That’s before they cut down the bridge,” Horowitz says. “When you hear stories like that, you can imagine how concerned we are. It’s going to be an absolute nightmare.”

I wish I could say any of this will make traffic appreciably better in that part of the Westside. But it's really about adding a carpool lane to the 405, and making some repairs and safety upgrades at the same time. You can get status reports from Metro or follow the project's daily updates on Twitter.