...Butnot in the immediate UCLA area. Your commute in the afternoon could be affected, depending on where you are going.
Traffic Notice Partial Closure
Description
President Obama Los Angeles Visit When: Wednesday, February 15, 2012, 3:00pm to 5:00pm Where: Los Angeles Westside Impacts: The President will be landing at LAX, then helicoptered to the VA Hospital, and finally driving to Holmby Hills. Rolling closures of streets along the route, meaning that as the motorcade passes, impacted streets and intersections will close, but open again quickly afterwards. Prolonged street closures are not anticipated. Specific details regarding the route are not available for security reasons. Mitigation: According to the information that is available from LA City officials, UCLA is not expected to be negatively impacted to any significant degree. Key intersections will be staffed with City of Los Angeles Traffic Officers during the rolling closures.
It won't be quite so bad as the picture suggests. But if you are a night owl at UCLA and use the 405, you may have a problem:
The northbound 405 Freeway will be closed between Getty Center Drive and Ventura Boulevard for construction starting Tuesday night. Crews will be reconstructing the Mulholland Bridge. Ramps were expected to close as early as 7 p.m. and freeway lanes may close as early as 10 p.m. The closure could continue for several nights.
The southbound side was expected to be closed in the same area beginning Saturday night.
We posted the audio of the “scoping” session on UCLA revised hotel/conference center proposal that was held on Nov. 14. There were repeated concerns raised about traffic. The plan evidently calls for all traffic to enter the campus through Westwood Boulevard, southern entrance from the Village.
But there is a limited turn-around space in front of the proposed hotel/conference center which must also accommodate various municipal bus lines that terminate there, hired buses that will pick up and leave off hotel/conference guests, and other drop-off vehicles, as well as the entrance to the project’s own parking. Comments from the public suggested that accommodating so much traffic in such a small space was impractical.
But maybe there is an answer, courtesy of Westwood’s Hotel Palomar. From yesterday’s LA Times:
Hotel lets guests walk for discount
A hotel in Westwood is rewarding guests who defy the stereotype that Angelenos don't walk. Hotel Palomar last month began rewarding guests who walk at least 10,000 steps a day with a 50% discount on their next hotel stay. To record the achievement, the hotel hands out free pedometers and walking maps to guests who sign up for the Walk This Way package.
The package, which will be offered until June 30, also includes a $20 credit for food and drinks at the hotel. The deal is also available at the Hotel Palomar San Diego. For the average person, 10,000 stepsis about five miles of walking. It's a target that first gained popularity in Japan in the 1960s as a daily goal to remain healthy and active.
The Hotel Palomar Los Angeles suggests that guests who wish to walk 10,000 steps circle nearby Holmby Park or the UCLA campus…
Bottom line: No cars or buses are needed. Guests can walk to the hotel/conference center (and get a discount on the already cheap $180 room rate - a Palomar style 50% walking discount would cut their room cost for future events to $90). Just a modest suggestion!
As the song goes:
Just to be helpful, here are the Google-map walking directions from LAX to UCLA:
Los Angeles International Airport 1. Head north on World Way toward West Way 0.6 mi 2. Turn left onto Sky Way 0.3 mi 3. Slight left toward Davidson Dr 230 ft 4. Turn right onto Davidson Dr 417 ft 5. Turn right onto Alverstone Ave 364 ft 6. Turn left onto W 96th St 315 ft 7. Continue onto S Sepulveda Blvd 2.3 mi 8. Slight left onto Sepulveda Blvd 1.0 mi 9. Turn right onto Jefferson Blvd 0.6 mi 10. Turn left onto Overland Ave 2.2 mi 11. Slight left to stay on Overland Ave 1.8 mi 12. Turn right onto Santa Monica Blvd E 0.1 mi 13. Turn left onto Manning Ave 1.1 mi 14. Turn right onto Hilgard Ave 0.2 mi 15. Turn left onto Westholme Ave 0.1 mi 16. Turn right toward Portola Pl 128 ft 17. Turn right onto Portola Pl 0.1 mi 18. Slight right onto Charles E Young Dr S/Portola Pl 469 ft 19. Turn left 0.1 mi 20. Turn left 72 ft University of California, Los Angeles
More bad traffic news if you are the type who works late at UCLA:
The 405 Freeway contractor will begin demolition and reconstruction of the northern half of the Sunset Boulevard Bridge starting Monday, Oct. 31, for 12 consecutive nights. Construction work will take place between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m., with bridge demolition occurring between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m. Demolition of columns and bents is anticipated to take place on Wednesday, Nov. 9 through Friday, Nov. 11, 2011...
Drivers should expect delays along Sepulveda Boulevard in Westwood starting today and continuing for three months...
As part of a $1 billion project to widen the San Diego (405) Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass, Chevron needs to move a gas line that runs underneath Sepulveda Boulevard.The move requires workers to drill underground, beginning near Sepulveda and Montana Avenue. The drilling exit point will be the intersection of Sepulveda and Moraga Drive.
The work requires the closure of one southbound lane of Sepulveda adjacent to the drill's entry and exit points, said Dave Sotero of Metro. Most of Sepulveda between the two intersections will be fully open, but "any closure on Sepulveda is a problem," Sotero said.Crews are scheduled to work from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. for three months.
Traffic problems also will be exacerbated by the closure of the southbound San Diego Freeway offramp at Sunset Boulevard for at least another week. Sotero said crews are ahead of schedule on raising approaches to Sunset Bridge, which will be about four feet higher on one side. The offramp is scheduled to reopen Sunday.
An LAObserved report yesterday suggested that getting home from UCLA this coming Monday (Oct. 24) may be complicated by an “Obamajam.” (Excerpt)
President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive at LAX on board Air Force One between 4:30 and 5 p.m. on Monday, the White House just announced. This means that however he moves to the Hancock Park area for Democratic campaign fundraisers … his travel will fall during the peak time for cross-town traffic. Yeah, we're talking Obamajam again…
Wilshire Boulevard Closure Postponed Until Monday As Part Of 405 Construction Work
The contractor is anticipated to begin erecting bridge false-work at the Wilshire under-crossing on Monday, Oct. 24 through Thursday, Oct. 28, 2011 from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. The 405 construction contractor has postponed the full closure of Wilshire Boulevard until Monday, Oct. 24, 2011. This activity will require the full closure of Wilshire Blvd., from Veteran to Federal.
False-work is a temporary structure used to support structures in order to hold the component in place until construction is sufficiently advanced to support itself. Sepulveda Blvd. will be reduced to one lane in each direction from Ohio to Constitution and the Northbound 405 off-ramp to Westbound Wilshire will be closed.
An earlier post on this blog noted an ongoing labor dispute at the reopening Hotel Bel-Air.From LAObserved’s morning buzz comes this word of caution for today:
Union hotel workers will picket the Hotel Bel-Air at 4:30 p.m. and at 5:30 p.m. march to Sunset Boulevard and Stone Canyon Drive. Traffic alerts have gone out.
More I-405 problems for commuters to and from UCLA:
Gridlock-causing closures to ramps connecting the 405 freeway to Sunset and Wilshire boulevards — crucial pipelines for UCLA commuters and visitors — will take place in waves that start as early as this Friday.
A multi-week Sunset area closure scheduled from Oct. 15-29 and months-long Wilshire ramp closures beginning in November will likely cause the most traffic problems for Bruins.
The Sunset work will particularly throttle traffic for UCLA commuters from the San Fernando Valley. The construction will allow utility work and bridge-widening at Sunset and ramp realignments at Wilshire as part of a $1 billion 405-widening project by Metro, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority...
A full directional closure of the 405 Freeway in each direction will take place tonight for 10 hours from 10 p.m. for reconstruction work to be performed on the northern half of the Skirball Bridge, weather permitting.Only one direction of the 405 freeway will be closed at one time tonight starting at 10 p.m.
…Ramps within the freeway closure limits may close as early as 7 p.m. and freeway lanes may close as early as 10 p.m., leading up to the full directional freeway closure beginning at midnight.
Sometime this fall, two Wilshire on- and off-ramps to the 405 Freeway will be closed for 90 days. That work will be followed by a series of closures of the other Wilshire ramps, each expected to last from 14 to 90 days. (There are eight ramps in all, and they will be worked on two at a time.)The end result should be sweet: modern, swooping flyover ramps that will make it easier to navigate the notoriously jammed intersection.But getting to that point may be considerably less so, in the view of residents of neighborhoods around the construction.
“That’s going to be the next shoe to drop,” said Steve Resnick, president of the Westwood Homeowners Association. “The 405 closure, as it turned out, was just the opposite of what was expected. It was terrific. The feeling is that this could be much worse.”
The tentative schedule for the project says the ramps are set to close in October, but project officials say the work is actually likely to begin in November. The ramps that will be closing first are the westbound Wilshire on-ramp to the northbound 405 and the northbound 405 off-ramp to westbound Wilshire.
It’s all part of a massive, $1.034 billion project, set to finish in 2013, that will add a 10-mile northbound carpool lane to the 405 along with other improvements such as the flyover ramps at Wilshire.
There are also concerns at UCLA. The closures will have a “significant impact on traffic congestion and commute patterns in and around Westwood,” Renée A. Fortier, Executive Director, UCLA Events & Transportation, said in a statement. She said the university is working with project officials to minimize “cut-through” traffic on the campus, particularly around Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. It also plans to take steps to publicize the closures in advance and to encourage students and employees who live north of the Sepulveda Pass to to join existing rideshare programs…
