Carmageddon ends: 405 Freeway reopens to traffic [Updated]
The 405 Freeway officially reopened through the Sepulveda Pass on Sunday morning, hours ahead of schedule.
Officials began removing the barriers blocking the onramps to the freeway around noon.
[Updated at 12:05 p.m.: Officials began allowing southbound traffic to flow, followed a few minutes later by northbound traffic. The move came after officials drove the closed portion of the freeway to look for any debris. They first opened the freeway’s exit ramps, then the entrance ramps.]
PHOTOS: Carmageddon closes the 405 Freeway
The weekend demolition of half of the Mulholland Drive bridge spanning the 405, dubbed Carmageddon, cost an estimated $3 million, according to Mike Barbour, project director of the I-405 Sepulveda Pass Widening Project. The contractors will receive extra pay for getting the job done early.
“We worked with the contractor to build in some incentives to get it done early,” Barbour said. He would not quantify the extra pay except to say it “isn’t a large number.”
“By us opening early, that far outweighs any money spent” on incentives, he said.
The 405 was shut down at midnight Friday night between the 101 and 10 freeways, as workers demolished the southern half of the bridge, which spans the freeway. That 10-mile stretch of the 405 carries roughly 500,000 vehicles on a normal July weekend.
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I don’t know what the big deal is. The freeway that I normally take to and from work (in Detroit) has been shut down since May and is not scheduled to re-open until November. Somehow everyone has managed to find alternate routes.