Hollywood Freeway

Two separate three-vehicle collisions left the southbound Hollywood Freeway clogged much of Sunday afternoon. No one was injured in the first accident, about 1:45 p.m., which blocked the three right lanes near Riverside Drive for about an hour, said Jose Nunez of the California Highway Patrol. Then about 3 p.m., CHP officers stopped to investigate a stalled car on the freeway near Burbank Boulevard, Nunez said. Their patrol car was rear-ended by another car. That collision pushed the patrol car out into traffic where it was struck by a second car. Seven passengers from the two oncoming cars were taken to hospitals with moderate injuries, Los Angeles fire officials said.

For much of my adult life, I've been driving a stretch of freeway that has the worst traffic in the United States. In my commuter heart of hearts, I sort of knew this to be true, even though I didn't want to believe it. "Ah, it's not so bad," I'd tell people. "Sometimes, I just breeze through. " Now a team of traffic researchers has made it all very clear to me: I've been in deep denial. According to a new study by the Texas Transportation Institute, no other corridor in America is as congested as the northbound stretch of the 110 between Interstate 10 and Stadium Way. Take the two most congested freeways outside of L.A. and add up the traffic on both — the northbound Van Wyck Expressway in New York, and the Bay Bridge eastbound in San Francisco — and you'd still have less congestion than on that 3.1-mile northbound section of the Harbor and Pasadena freeways.

Your Dec. 21 article on the "magic and might" of the Hollywood Freeway failed to pose an important question to Caltrans and the engineers who designed and built it. At the intersection of the Hollywood and the Ventura freeways, how did they "forget" to build ramps connecting the 101 north to the 134 east and the 134 west to the 101 south? Every day this oversight forces thousands of cars off the freeway--onto the city streets--then back onto the freeway, causing traffic jams and hundreds of lost hours for commuters.

Sister Margaret Farrell peers uncertainly over her shoulder as she tries to maneuver a lumbering minivan across several lanes of morning traffic on the Hollywood Freeway. "I used to drive a cute little nun's car," she says, shaking her head. Her 23-year-old passenger, Leane, chuckles and leans out the window to guide her. They make a cheerful pair: the Irish nun and the transgender woman. Audio slideshow: An unlikely friendship Leane was kicked out of home at 13 and spent years cycling between group homes and the streets.

Traffic on the Hollywood Freeway remained snarled or rerouted for much of the morning commute Friday as investigators converged on the North Hollywood site where a Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus jumped the median and caused a 12-car pileup, killing two people. Investigators focused their investigation on a silver car that they believe clipped the bus while both vehicles were traveling north near Burbank Boulevard at about 60 mph, the California Highway Patrol said.

The planned closure and construction project on the northbound Hollywood Freeway near Lankershim Boulevard has been postponed from this weekend to the following weekend, MTA officials said. All northbound lanes on the freeway at the Ventura Boulevard offramp will be closed from midnight Saturday, May 20 through about 9 a.m. Sunday, May 21.

A 21-year-old motorist was shot to death as he drove on the Hollywood Freeway near downtown, police said Tuesday. The shooting took place about 11:30 p.m. Monday. The driver's car crashed into a retaining wall near the Mission Road exit, injuring two passengers, who required hospitalization, investigators said. Officers described the injuries as minor, but no information on their condition was immediately available.

Two people were injured Thursday in a six-vehicle collision on the Hollywood Freeway in which two cars overturned and a stretch of the road was closed for about 90 minutes, backing up traffic for miles. The collision occurred about 4:30 p.m. just north of Sherman Way, closing four lanes of the freeway. A number of people were examined by paramedics at the scene, and two were taken to a hospital, complaining of neck and back pain.

Caltrans will close portions of the Hollywood Freeway in downtown Los Angeles starting tonight to do repairs. The closures will run from 9 tonight to noon Saturday, said Caltrans spokesman David White, and are part of an extensive, $24.5-million highway realignment project that will include replacing on- and offramps at Hewitt and Vignes streets, installing new ramps at Garey Street and building a bridge over the freeway in preparation for a Gold Line extension.

A jackknifed tractor-trailer truck unleashed a load of 840 sheets of drywall onto the Hollywood Freeway in North Hollywood on Tuesday, forcing authorities to close the four northbound lanes during rush hour and into the evening. The truck jackknifed just before 5 p.m. on the northbound side of the freeway at Victory Boulevard, California Highway Patrol Officer Louis Borunda said. CHP officials closed the northbound lanes and began diverting traffic onto Victory a quarter of an hour later.

The drudgery of the freeway commute is not eased by the sights along the way — the graffiti, the bad seat-belt poetry ("Click It or Ticket"), the seemingly endless number of billboards touting lap-band surgery. Occasionally, it is true, there have been flashes of freeway culture. Off-beat artist Sandra Tsing Loh performed a piano recital for motorists in a parking structure off the Harbor Freeway in 1987. Singer Robert Goulet serenaded drivers with a megaphone from a helicopter above the Ventura Freeway in 1991 as part of a Valentine's Day radio promotion.

The freeway is jammed, traffic is crawling and motorists are steamed. On top of all that, they want a 100-acre park. That describes the plan to roof-over a half-mile stretch of the Hollywood Freeway in downtown Los Angeles and turn it into a gentle greenbelt. The idea of a $700-million "cap" covering the freeway between Hope and Alameda streets in the Civic Center area is the latest in a series of proposals to convert airspace above local freeways into public parkland. Civic leaders in Hollywood and Santa Monica have initiated similar freeway-cover campaigns for sections of highway there.

I grew up thinking that California drivers were the best in the world. We may not have been very polite, especially in heavy traffic. But back in the glory days we California natives were savvy drivers. We were practically born behind a steering wheel, so it came easy to us. I learned the ins and outs of "defensive driving" before I learned my multiplication tables. My classroom was the back seat of a Volkswagen and my teacher was my father, who imparted instruction as he drove up and down the Hollywood Freeway.

It all started with the 1969 crash of a poultry truck on the Hollywood Freeway -- an Egg-Alert, you could call it. "I tried to avoid a lady who cut in front of me, and I turned over," driver Joe Silbert told The Times in 2000. "I was taking anywhere from 500 to 1,000 chickens back from the Valley to a slaughterhouse in L.A." As eggs exploded, many of the birds spilled out and escaped into the brush near the Vineland Avenue onramp in Studio City. Silbert gave chase but estimated that at least 200 chickens made their way to freedom.

Two separate three-vehicle collisions left the southbound Hollywood Freeway clogged much of Sunday afternoon. No one was injured in the first accident, about 1:45 p.m., which blocked the three right lanes near Riverside Drive for about an hour, said Jose Nunez of the California Highway Patrol. Then about 3 p.m., CHP officers stopped to investigate a stalled car on the freeway near Burbank Boulevard, Nunez said. Their patrol car was rear-ended by another car. That collision pushed the patrol car out into traffic where it was struck by a second car. Seven passengers from the two oncoming cars were taken to hospitals with moderate injuries, Los Angeles fire officials said.

Maybe they've just scratched the surface, those who want to cover over a mile-long section of the Hollywood Freeway and create a park on top. But a group promoting construction of an airy, meandering promenade for local Hollywood residents isn't certain what its effect might be on motorists down below traveling through a serpentine tunnel between Bronson Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard.

Re "The goal: A foot-friendly city," Aug. 10 I hope these efforts lead other cities, especially Hollywood, to focus on the needs of those on foot. Presently, it is impossible to walk through the Cahuenga Pass between Hollywood and the Valley without risking death or injury, because there is no sidewalk. The pass is a providential gateway through which men have crossed -- on foot, horseback, wagon train and bicycle -- for centuries. But when the Hollywood Freeway was constructed, its builders failed to provide any path by which humans could walk into our historic and beloved city of stars.

Eight people, including one child, were injured Monday afternoon in a collision on the southbound Hollywood Freeway, authorities said. The four-vehicle crash occurred about 4:20 p.m. south of Highland Avenue, the California Highway Patrol said. Two of the vehicles overturned. Lanes were blocked briefly, authorities said. -- Anna Gorman