SACRAMENTO — Even in Los Angeles, where celebrities dress their pets in designer clothes, a proposal for a $455,000 animal path over the 405 Freeway has riled residents who say scarce transportation dollars should not be used to help deer and bobcats get around while humans remain stuck in endless traffic.
The cost could balloon to $1.4 million if environmentalists can persuade the city to extend the wildlife path, which would be part of an overpass for vehicles and pedestrians, beyond the freeway, officials said.
The plan has split residents of wealthy Westside enclaves, where the impulse to be environmentally correct is clashing with frustration over the tortoise-like pace on area roadways.
Even some activists who have long supported green causes are ridiculing the idea of a special path on the Skirball Center Drive bridge so coyote and opossum can commute across the Sepulveda Pass.
"What are they going to do, have Doctor Dolittle standing there directing animals to use the bridge?" scoffed Ernest Frankel, a member of the Mountaingate Community Assn., a residents group.
Others, including biologist Paul Edelman of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy, say that if the state is going to expand the 405 as planned, it has an obligation to help wildlife across open spaces sliced roughly in half by one of the nation's busiest freeways.
"In today's dollars, doing this to improve the quality of open space and solve a serious wildlife issue is a drop in the bucket," Edelman said. "If we want healthy wild animals in Griffith Park and other open spaces, this is a must."
The controversy stems from a plan by the California Department of Transportation to replace the Skirball overpass to accommodate the scheduled widening of the 405 and the addition of a carpool lane through Brentwood, Bel-Air and Sherman Oaks.
Concerned that the wider freeway would make it more difficult for wildlife to cross east and west from habitats above the pass, the conservancy won a tentative commitment from Caltrans to make the new bridge, which also would include lanes for cars, 5 feet wider than originally planned.
The additional width would help the roaming wildlife, according to a preliminary design expected to receive final approval in January once an environmental review is completed. The bridge is not expected to be finished until early 2013.
