Freeways

In an effort to unsnarl traffic tie-ups, Caltrans is building a flyover bridge at the junction of the San Diego and Corona del Mar freeways and improving onramps and offramps at Harbor Boulevard and Fairview Road. The $54-million project is scheduled for completion in mid-2004.

The Inland Empire's version of "Carmageddon" begins Friday night when Caltrans shuts down sections of northbound Interstate 215 in San Bernardino as part of an ongoing $723-million freeway-widening project. The "Big Shift," as transportation officials are calling it, is necessary to reconfigure traffic lanes during construction. The closure begins at 11 p.m. Friday and is scheduled to end at 6 a.m. Monday. It will occur in stages between 2nd Street and Highland Avenue. The southbound lanes will be open.

A deceptively straight and smooth highway tempts drivers to go too fast through this postcard picture of rural California, where cows meander in the foothills and tractors harvest grain on the valley floor. The results have been fatal time and again on California 46, where actor James Dean died more than four decades ago. Five more deaths this month bring the grisly total to 31 since 1992 on the two-lane stretch of highway known as Blood Alley.

The smiles should be wide and plentiful. The Dodgers' new owners should take over this week, meeting the media and greeting fans and officially liberating the team from its dysfunctional era. What could possibly wipe the smiles off the faces of Magic Johnson, Stan Kasten and Mark Walter? How about the Angels moving into a new ballpark in downtown Los Angeles, three miles from Dodger Stadium? As the Dodgers emerge from bankruptcy, the most compelling baseball story in town might well involve how the Dodgers and Angels handle their aging ballparks.

French novelist Victor Hugo is widely quoted as saying that there is "nothing as powerful as an idea whose time has come." The time for advertising and sending messages to motorists traveling along California's highways came long before I introduced SB 1453, which The Times pilloried in its July 9 editorial, "What's wrong with this picture?" Blinking, scrolling, flashing billboards already beam advertisements to passing motorists on California's freeways. Vanity and environmental license plates tell motorists who you are, what you like and where you are from.

One feature of life in Southern California that's become hard to avoid is the relentless advertising for a weight-loss procedure known as lap-band surgery. You've probably seen the billboards: They feature a willowy blond in a red tank top and the phone number 1-800-GET-THIN in huge red letters. "LOSE WEIGHT WITH THE LAP-BAND!" they say. These billboards blanket Southland freeways like a giant adipose layer. I've counted 17 on one four-mile stretch of Interstate 5 east of downtown Los Angeles.

State lawmakers are moving to allow lone motorists to use carpool lanes on congested stretches of the 110 and 10 freeways -- for a fee. Vehicles carrying more than one person could still cruise in those lanes without charge under a proposal under consideration by the Legislature. The measure must be passed by midnight Sunday or the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority risks losing a $210.6-million federal grant that would pay for toll plazas, road and rail improvements, and a fleet of clean-fuel buses that would run as a rapid line along the route.

Children born to mothers who live close to freeways have twice the risk of autism, researchers reported Thursday. The study, its authors say, adds to evidence suggesting that certain environmental exposures could play a role in causing the disorder in some children. "This study isn't saying exposure to air pollution or exposure to traffic causes autism," said Heather Volk, lead author of the paper and a researcher at the Saban Research Institute of Children's Hospital Los Angeles.

Not-so-freeways Re "Traffic relief for $1.40 a mile," July 7 Have we so completely lost track of the ideal of the equality of our citizenry that we are trying to force lower-income drivers off the freeways? Would these transportation "experts" be willing to charge a fee to let the wealthy step to the front of the line at the DMV or at the courthouse? Though equality in the private sector is an illusion, in the public sector, on the street and in government dealings, we should all be seen as equals.

Los Angeles residents living near freeways experience a hardening of the arteries that leads to heart disease and strokes at twice the rate of those who live farther away, a study has found. The paper is the first to link automobile and truck exhaust to the progression of atherosclerosis -- or the thickening of artery walls -- in humans. The study was conducted by researchers from USC and UC Berkeley, joined by colleagues in Spain and Switzerland, and was published this week in the journal PloS ONE. Researchers used ultrasound to measure the wall thickness of the carotid artery in 1,483 people who lived within 100 meters, or 328 feet, of Los Angeles freeways.

Attorneys for the family of an unarmed 19-year-old man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police filed a $120-million claim Monday against the city. The man was shot after he led officers on a high-speed freeway pursuit and called 911 to threaten them with a gun. The Times reported that LAPD officers fired more than 90 rounds at Abdul Arian after he assumed a "shooting stance" and appeared to raise his arms and point a weapon while running backward on the 101 Freeway after the pursuit ended.

The family of Abdul Arian remembered the 19-year-old young man who was fatally shot by Los Angeles police officers after a high-speed chase Thursday morning for his desire to become a police officer. "He wanted to be an LAPD cop," said Hamed Arian, the youth's uncle, "and the LAPD killed him. " But as details of Arian's life emerge, the picture of his ambitions becomes more complicated. A police narrative of the shooting on the 101 Freeway in Woodland Hills suggests a troubled end for the young man who placed a 911 call during the pursuit and told authorities he was armed with a gun. Police did not recover a gun from the scene.

Before a new dawn breaks for the Dodgers under changed ownership, there was this year's first night of baseball at Dodger Stadium. After all the news of a record sales price, investment groups, Magic Johnson and the Dodgers' uncertain future, the ballpark at Chavez Ravine — celebrating its 50th anniversary — reopened its doors for 2012. With an announced 20,009 looking on, the Dodgers defeated the Angels, 4-1, in the second game of their three-game exhibition Freeway Series.

Albert Pujols has entered a season with a team defending its World Series victory. That team of great expectations finished with a losing record. The season before Pujols led the St. Louis Cardinals to the 2011 World Series, the team failed to make the playoffs. So do big expectations like those confronting the Angels and $240-million addition Pujols help or hurt? "You guys are the ones picking us to win," Pujols said Monday before making his Angel Stadium debut against the Dodgers in the opener of the three-game Freeway Series that moves to Dodger Stadium on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Advertisements for Lap-Band weight-loss surgery with that catchy telephone number, 1-800-GET-THIN, have quietly been pulled off roadside billboards across Southern California. Billboard companies Clear Channel Outdoor Inc. and Lamar Advertising Co. confirmed that marketing firm 1-800-GET-THIN has let its contracts with them expire. If the ads do not return, it would mark the end to one of Southern California's most aggressive medical advertising campaigns — one marked by controversy.

Pressure is mounting on the California Department of Transportation to sell 460 homes it acquired decades ago in Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno to make way for an extension of the 710 Freeway that has been stalled ever since. But officials say it could be years before any decision is made on the properties. Caltrans bought the homes in the 1950s, '60s and '70s to accommodate plans to extend the northern end of the Long Beach Freeway from Alhambra, where it ends now, to the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena.

First Hollywood floated the plan. Now, Santa Monica is talking about adding open space by building over freeways. City officials in Santa Monica are exploring the idea of "capping" the 10 Freeway between 17th and 14th avenues as a way to add seven acres of land to the city and possibly create more open space. The City Council voted Tuesday night to authorize city staff to submit an application to the state for $250,000 in grant money to fund a feasibility study for the idea.

A series of armed robberies of distressed motorists along Inland Empire freeways earlier this month has prompted the California Highway Patrol to form a special task force and increase early morning patrols. The robberies all occurred in the early hours of Sept. 18 and 19. In two incidents, the robbers fired shots, though no one was hurt, authorities said. The suspects, who remain at large, are described only as three or four men wearing hooded sweat shirts. "There are isolated incidents where things like this happen," said CHP Officer Daniel Hesser, a spokesman for the department's Inland Division.

Even in a region where gridlock is a daily fact of life, what happened Sunday on the 10 Freeway west of Palm Springs has morphed from traffic jam to full-fledged scandal. A routine California Department of Transportation road repair project gone awry backed up traffic for about 25 miles Sunday, forcing drivers to endure delays of five hours or more and sparking a furious political backlash that has put Caltrans on the defensive. On Thursday, Caltrans offered its most detailed account yet of what went wrong, saying that a series of errors ranging from a delay in getting concrete shipments to removing too much worn pavement contributed to what they admit was a "horrible situation.

Dodgers first baseman James Loney, who was arrested in November on suspicion of driving under the influence, won't face criminal charges, prosecutors said Wednesday. Loney's test for drugs and alcohol came back negative, according to the city attorney's office, which said there was "insufficient evidence" to proceed with the case. Loney was under investigation for his role in a multiple-car accident on the 101 Freeway in Sherman Oaks on Nov. 14. Loney sideswiped three cars, stopped in the fast lane, passed out, then awakened and tried to flee the scene only to crash again, according to the California Highway Patrol.