During the morning and evening crawl that Los Angeles commuters refer to -- with bitter irony that most don't even attempt to conceal -- as the "rush hour," there is one paved snake pit that drivers there loathe above all others: The 405.
"Most people go through their lives trying to avoid the 405," Caltrans district director Mike Miles conceded this week.
Beginning at midnight Friday, when 10 miles of Interstate 405 are closed so construction crews can tear down a bridge on one side, and begin a $1 billion widening project on the other, a traffic snarl so angry and epic is expected to erupt that even local officials have given in to calling it "Carmageddon." The freeway, which typically carries 500,000 cars through the Sepulveda Pass every weekend, is scheduled to reopen at 6 a.m. Monday.
By then, doctors will have bivouacked with patients at hospitals and a state-of-the-art police command post will be able to lower the threat level from Defcon 5.
Observing from a safe distance, motorists in the Bay Area are advised to stay away and enjoy the view. They are likely to witness a stop-and-go carnival of rage, featuring a detour from hell and drivers who finally will be able to text behind the wheel. TURN BACK BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE:-(
Interstate 405 is the main north-south conduit between the San Fernando Valley's vast sprawl and L.A.'s tonier precincts, such as Beverly Hills and Bel-Air. They are neighbors with so little in common that as recently as 2002, the Valley launched a ballot initiative seeking to secede from Los Angeles.
Despite all the official hyperventilating and the catchy name, however, nobody is sure if what one county supervisor has preemptively dubbed "the mother of all traffic jams" will be any different than a normal weekday commute on the frustrating 405.
Some noted, hopefully, that a similarly fearful buildup preceded the 1984 Summer Olympic Games, resulting in clear sailing for drivers on many freeways. But the population in L.A. County has increased 22.5 percent since then, with a corresponding rise in registered drivers. So the sunny Southland has been threatening its citizens with carpocalypse like it was 1984.
When JetBlue announced that it would launch four $4 flights taking off Saturday between its hub in Long Beach and Bob Hope Airport in Burbank -- providing what the airline called a "planepool" from the San Fernando Valley to the beach -- it seemed to overlook the fact that people in the valley have ready access to beaches such as Malibu, and rarely feel compelled to drive an hour and a half to spread their towels on Long Beach.
That didn't stop bewildered Burbankians from buying every available ticket on the airlift, which sold out in three hours -- a roundtrip from nowhere to nowhere.
That is not how L.A. sees itself, of course, and the Los Angeles Police Department seemed determined to spin the city's looming transportation nightmare into an extra-special edition of "Entertainment Tonight." The LAPD reached out to celebrities renowned for their large Twitter followings, asking them to tweet traffic warnings to an audience potentially so vast there is no way to measure it: the profoundly clueless.
"Twitter is a way to reach that whole demographic that could be oblivious to the 405 closure," said Lt. Andy Neiman, an LAPD spokesman.
Officials said the tweeters they were trying hardest to line up were Lady Gaga (with about 11.3 million followers), Ashton Kutcher (7 million) and Kim Kardashian (8 million). Based on her widely circulated sex tape and appearances on the reality TV show "Keeping Up With the Kardashians," there was some concern that the celebrity who puts the "lite" in socialite might actually be the target demographic the Twitter blast was designed to reach.
With illuminated Caltrans signs warning motorists to stay away from Carmageddon posted as far north as Redding, the LAPD's concern that enough people in L.A. might be so hopelessly "oblivious" that they could come together to cause the bitchin'est traffic jam in the city's history was itself cause for concern. Or should have been.
When Tom Hanks, whose most recent movie tanked, became the first -- and so far only -- celebrity to tweet a warning, it seemed to confirm that people over 50 should not be allowed to use social media. "Avoid Carmageddon, Gas-zilla, 405-enstein, Grid-lock-apalooza!" thumbed Hanks. He forgot Hoodstock.
Four hospitals clustered around the freeway demonstrated a range of responses that closely mirrored the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief. The chief administrative officer at Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center, Posie Carpenter, went straight to hissy fit (the second stage), claiming that the closure was forcing hospitals to "play roulette with our patients' lives."
But the same hospital's emergency director, Dr. Wally Ghurabi, said he planned to sleep in the E.R. throughout the weekend, rather than commute to his home in Torrance 20 miles away. UCLA Health System ordered 5,200 box lunches for its staff and a cot for Dr. Wally.
Perhaps the most touching humanitarian relief effort came from Dr. Arnold Klein, Michael Jackson's dermatologist -- a credit obviously still valued in Beverly Hills dermatological circles, despite the late pop star's open-faced approach to cosmetic surgery. Klein was offering 25 percent off Botox injections all weekend. "Instead of being stuck on the freeway," he reasoned, "you could be ... more beautiful."
If the freeway's tummy tuck isn't done by the Monday morning deadline, contractor Kiewit Infrastructure West faces a $6,000 penalty for every 10 minutes it's late. As the senior project manager for C.C. Myers Inc. during Labor Day weekend closures of the Bay Bridge in 2007 and 2009, Bob Coupe planned similar operations for as long as a year in advance. "It's like a play," he said Thursday. "Everybody has to know his line, and when to say it."
With a ready made title like "Carmageddon," it feels more like an action picture -- Daniel Day Lewis and Kim Kardashian, gridlocked in an embrace too powerful to resist, and too stupid to comprehend.
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