Road Repairs

Orange County transportation officials approved $61 million Monday to repair bumpy county thoroughfares, part of a three-year effort to reduce a backlog of such work. The funds, approved unanimously by the Orange County Transportation Authority, will be combined with more than $80 million in local matching funds for work on arterials that serve regional, as opposed to municipal, traffic. "These repairs are important to everybody," OCTA Director Miguel Pulido said.

Two lanes over the Hollywood Boulevard sinkhole opened to traffic Sunday night, and officials expected all lanes to be restored to normal traffic in about two weeks. After filling in much of a 70-foot-wide sinkhole that opened up Thursday, construction crews spent Sunday repaving part of the street, allowing a single lane of traffic in each direction on a one-block stretch between Vermont and Normandie avenues.

The Castaic Animal Shelter lost its sewer line and main access road when water released from Castaic Lake washed out a wide swath of Tapia Canyon Road and severed a sewage line beneath it, county officials said Tuesday. The road was washed out last Wednesday when Castaic Creek overflowed. Raw sewage from the shelter flowed into the Santa Clara River for several hours before it was detected early Thursday morning, shelter manager John Rozier said.

A 7-year-old dream of creating a network of efficient super-streets for road-weary motorists is still years away from becoming a reality countywide, but drivers in the northwest part of the county could see some relief by fall. Work is continuing on a stretch of Beach Boulevard from Stark Street in Huntington Beach to Lincoln Avenue in Buena Park.

For the next four months, the on-ramp at Euclid Street to the northbound Santa Ana Freeway will be closed to motorists as freeway construction work continues. The closure will allow for construction of a new on-ramp, to increase freeway access and to provide better traffic flow on local streets. Anaheim officials have long awaited the ramp improvements to ease the way to the Anaheim Plaza shopping center.

There will be less bumping and grinding in and around Whiteman Airport, thanks to Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's plan to seal cracked and chipped pavement in taxiways, aprons, parking lots and roads leading to the Pacoima airfield. Beginning in June, fissures, potholes and other defects in airport-related roadways and lots will be repaired with a mixture of sand and rubberized asphalt derived from recycled tires.

Traffic on a stretch of Pacific Coast Highway through Malibu will be limited to one lane in each direction for three more months, but officials are hopeful that commuters and beach-goers this summer will not experience crippling traffic jams. Workers at the site of last month's rockslide at Las Flores Canyon Road began a daily 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

A national takeoff priority system that benefits Los Angeles International Airport will be continued for 90 days after one of the airport's four runways is reopened, the Federal Aviation Administration said Thursday. The "free flow" system, which allows flights out of LAX to leave before those at other airports during bad weather or backups in air traffic, was instituted as a temporary measure in February to reduce potential problems at LAX while Runway 24 Left was reconstructed.

A project to reconstruct a portion of Western Avenue between Artesia Boulevard and Orangethorpe Avenue has been completed. The City Council voted this week to approve a final payment of $42,918 to R.J. Noble Co. of Orange for its work on the project. Jim Vanderpool, a spokesman for the city's Public Works Department, said the project began in June and mainly involved repaving the street.

The work schedule for grading bluffs above Pacific Coast Highway near the Las Flores Canyon Road slide area has switched from seven to five days a week temporarily, state transportation officials said Wednesday. Grading and hauling will take place Monday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. for a five-week period before going back to a daily schedule of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., said Margie Tiritilli, a spokeswoman for Caltrans.