![]() It's the height of the summer tourist and beach season, and the 405 is used to get to and from Los Angeles International Airport, Santa Monica and West L.A., the San Fernando Valley and coastal communities like Long Beach and Redondo Beach. "The hope is that the 405 closure turns out like that, but the reality could be much different," said Marie Montgomery, a spokeswoman for the Auto Club of Southern California. Sound familiar? For those old enough to remember when Los Angeles hosted the crowd-generating Summer Olympics in 1984 the prediction of a traffic nightmare was dire enough to scare motorists out of their cars, leaving the roads less congested than usual. There are no alternative routes nearby that can handle the anticipated overflow, prompting state and regional transportation officials to warn of severe, multihour delays, above and beyond the usual hair-pulling, steering wheel-pounding congestion for which Los Angeles is famous. The affected stretch, running from Interstate 10, the Santa Monica Freeway, to Highway 101, the Ventura Freeway, is traveled by an estimated 500,000 vehicles on a typical weekend, including plenty driven by Bay Area residents heading into Dodger territory for vacation. The 405, as it's known in Southern California parlance, is one of the main traffic arteries in Los Angeles. ![]() "For those of you who think you can outsmart this potential mother of all traffic jams," he added, "my advice is simple: save your gas." "Allow me to be blunt: It's going to be a mess out there," Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky posted on his website. And they have this: no idea what really will transpire when a 10-mile stretch of Interstate 405 in Los Angeles is shut down for 53 hours starting tonight for a road-improvement project in the ultra-busy Sepulveda Pass in the heart of one of the most car-centric cultures in the world.
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