{"id":461869,"date":"2011-07-15T21:17:38","date_gmt":"2011-07-15T21:17:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ghanamma.net\/2011\/07\/15\/la-gets-ready-for-carmageddon\/"},"modified":"2011-07-15T21:17:38","modified_gmt":"2011-07-15T21:17:38","slug":"la-gets-ready-for-carmageddon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2011\/07\/15\/la-gets-ready-for-carmageddon\/","title":{"rendered":"LA gets ready for ‘carmageddon’"},"content":{"rendered":"

15 July 2011<\/span> Last updated at<\/span> 17:17 ET<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Los Angeles residents are bracing for “carmageddon”, the severe traffic jams that could result from the closure of a key stretch of highway during one of the city’s busiest weekends.<\/p>\n

Interstate 405, the main artery through the city, will be closed for 53 hours, beginning on Friday evening.<\/p>\n

Workers plan to add more lanes to a 10-mile (16km) section of the freeway.<\/p>\n

Los Angeles has recruited celebrities with large Twitter followings to warn residents of the closure.<\/p>\n

Transport officials say the highway is being closed to replace the 50-year-old Mulholland Bridge, as part of a $1bn (\u00a3600m) project to add additional lanes to a bottlenecked segment of the highway.<\/p>\n

Continue reading the main story<\/a><\/p>\n
\n

The wildcard is if the engineers don’t manage to open the freeway back up after two days\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

End Quote<\/span> Genevieve Giuliano<\/span> Professor of urban planning, University of Southern California<\/span><\/div>\n

Gridlock expected<\/span><\/p>\n

With the impending chaos from the closure – which has been dubbed “carmageddon” – expected to grind traffic to a halt on side streets and freeways, some have pledged to walk and others say they will take the skies.<\/p>\n

During the days leading up to the closure, helicopter taxi rides were being sold for $150 (\u00a393) to passengers hoping to get to Los Angeles International Airport during the weekend, and 10-minute flights between Burbank and Los Angeles were being offered by JetBlue for $4 per ticket.<\/p>\n

City officials have been issuing bleak traffic warnings to Southern California residents for weeks, reminiscent of flood and wildfire warnings.<\/p>\n

Mike Miles of the California Department of Transportation said traffic could be backed up for more than 100km.<\/p>\n

“You cannot close a road that carries close to 500,000 people a day on it and not expect problems,” he said.<\/p>\n

Mr Miles warned that roads could become dangerous if drivers tempted fate and battled their way through the jams.<\/p>\n

But some California residents are sceptical about the city’s warnings.<\/p>\n

“It’s possible that they are trying to scare everyone [into] staying off the roads so gridlock won’t happen,” said Los Angeles resident Lorelei Laird.<\/p>\n

“I don’t expect it to be the bumper-to-bumper nightmare that people are expecting,” she added.<\/p>\n

Some transport experts have compared the shutdown to other large planned events in the region, like the 1984 summer Olympics, Los Angeles Lakers championship parades and Michael Jackson’s memorial service – events when Los Angeles residents stayed off the roads.<\/p>\n

Just like now, “people had advanced notice to get off the roads during the Olympics”, said Genevieve Giuliano, a professor of urban planning and policy at University of Southern California.<\/p>\n

“The wildcard is that if the engineers don’t manage to open up the freeway back up after two days,” she added.<\/p>\n

The city of Los Angeles asked several celebrities, like Tom Hanks and Ashton Kutcher, to warn Los Angeles residents about carmageddon through the micro-blogging website Twitter.<\/p>\n

“This weekend, LA! Avoid Carmageddon, Gas-zilla, 405-enstein, Grid-lock-apalooza! STAY HOME. Eat & shop local,” Hanks wrote.<\/p>\n

Facebook also agreed to direct some 6.6 million Los Angeles area residents to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Facebook page for information on avoiding the traffic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

See original here:
\nLA gets ready for ‘carmageddon’<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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