Bridge demolition causing traffic delays in Los Angeles

The California city of Los Angeles is expected to suffer unprecedented levels of road congestion this weekend. The city has some of the most congested stretches of highway in the US and arguably the world. However the need to demolish a highway bridge will result in a highway closure, including a key interchange that carries extremely heavy traffic volumes. The I-405 San Diego highway will be closed between the San Fernando Valley and the LA Basin.
April 19, 2012 Read time: 1 min
The California city of Los Angeles is expected to suffer unprecedented levels of road congestion this weekend. The city has some of the most congested stretches of highway in the US and arguably the world. However the need to demolish a highway bridge will result in a highway closure, including a key interchange that carries extremely heavy traffic volumes. The I-405 San Diego highway will be closed between the San Fernando Valley and the LA Basin. The stretch shut for the demolition job will be between the busy interchange where I-405 meets the Ventura highway, and will end at interchange where I-405 meets the Santa Monica highway. The interchange where I-405 meets the Ventura highway is reputed to carry the highest volumes of merging traffic of any such interchange in the US. The authorities have been warning residents and commuters for some time over the closure.
Urban Traffic Control

Related Content

  • April 10, 2012
    Flexible, demand-based parking charges ease parking problems
    Innovative parking initiatives on the US Pacific Coast. David Crawford reviews. Californian cities are leading the way in trialling new solutions to their endemic parking problems. According to Donald Shoup, a professor of urban planning at the University of California in Los Angeles, drivers looking for available spots can cause up to 74% of traffic congestion in downtown areas. One solution is variable, demand-responsive pricing of parking.
    Read More
  • May 26, 2016
    Viaduct deck renewal creates detour dilemma for MassDOT
    As the deck renewal of the I-91 viaduct in Springfield gets underway, David Crawford looks at the preparation and planning to ease the resulting traffic congestion. Accommodating the deck renewal of a 4km-long/four-lanes in each direction viaduct in the heart of Springfield (Massachusetts’ third largest city), has involved the state’s Department of Transportation (MassDOT) in a massive exercise in transport research and ITS-based area-wide preplanning and traffic management. Supporting a workzone of well ab
    Read More
  • February 8, 2017
    Michael Baker International to study traffic congestion in Los Angeles
    Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) has awarded Michael Baker International a contract to study the I-605/SR-91 interchange, identify improvements and widen a particularly congested three-mile stretch of westbound SR-91 in Los Angeles. The project spans westbound SR-91 from the vicinity of Shoemaker Avenue to the I-605/SR-91 interchange, used by 270,000 vehicles a day. It also includes improvements to the Norwalk, Pioneer and Bloomfield local interchanges within the Gateway
    Read More
  • October 22, 2014
    Smoothing the path to reducing traffic pollution
    David Crawford reviews a new approach to traffic smoothing. A key objective for the Californian city of Bakersfield’s upgraded traffic operations centre (TOC), which opened in June 2014, is to help improve living conditions in a region with one of the worst air quality problems in the US. The TOC is speeding up the smoothing of traffic flows by delivering faster and better-informed traffic signal retiming and synchronisation.
    Read More

Highlighted Content