San Diego Freeway

Stepping up its offensive on the traffic snarls plaguing Los Angeles County, the California Highway Patrol on Thursday unveiled an ambitious six-month pilot program designed to alleviate congestion on the most troubled portions of the San Bernardino, Santa Ana and San Diego freeways. Dubbed Operation CLEAR--for Clearing Lanes Efficiently And Rapidly--the program will use specially trained teams of "congestion relief officers," CHP officers whose sole duty will be to patrol specific sections of the three freeways in search of stalled cars, debris and other traffic impediments.

Reader Ron King of Camarillo doesn't like how The Times refers to local freeways. A recent example , from Saturday's paper: The Getty fire started in high brush on the east side of the 405 Freeway near Getty Center Drive during the afternoon rush hour… King - and other readers - think that reference should have been to the San Diego Freeway. “Freeways should be referred to by their names, not federal interstate numbers like they do in other unimaginative places that don't have interesting traditions,” King emailed.

The San Diego Freeway was closed in both directions at Hawthorne Boulevard in Lawndale late Tuesday because of a collision involving four cars, including a California Highway Patrol car. The CHP said the crash occurred in the southbound lanes at about 10:45 p.m., and the freeway was expected to be closed possibly for more than an hour. Northbound lanes were closed in case a helicopter was needed to transport people to hospitals.

Caltrans has fired two employees amid investigations into faulty — and in some instances falsified — structural testing on bridges and highway projects across the state, including a carpool lane connector and an under-crossing retaining wall in the Los Angeles area. During a news conference Monday, Caltrans officials identified the employees as Duane Wiles, a former technician who tested bridge and freeway structures, and Brian Liebich, who supervised Wiles as head of the agency's foundation testing unit.

A Granada Hills woman was shot on the San Diego Freeway this weekend as she and her boyfriend drove home from her 20th birthday celebration, police said Saturday. Laura Previde was listed in serious but stable condition Saturday evening at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Panorama City. Shortly after the shooting, police arrested Temmie Brown, 23, of Gardena at an apartment complex in the 15100 block of Plummer Street in North Hills.

A man walking on the San Diego Freeway early Friday was struck and killed by a car just south of Newland Street, authorities said. His name was not released. The accident occurred about 1:15 a.m. when the man was hit in the freeway's northbound lanes. The accident is under investigation, authorities said.

After nearly three years of construction, Caltrans has opened the first segment of a carpool lane that will eventually stretch from the Long Beach Freeway to Normandie Avenue. The 2.5-mile section on the northbound San Diego Freeway extends between Avalon Boulevard and Normandie Avenue, said a Caltrans spokeswoman. The lane will be continued four more miles to the Long Beach Freeway, and a six-mile carpool lane will be built across the median on the southbound San Diego Freeway. The $28.

Construction of sound walls will begin next week on the San Diego Freeway in Van Nuys, from south of the Sherman Way underpass to Raymer Street, according to the state Department of Transportation. The $1.75-million project is expected to be completed in 11 months, Caltrans spokeswoman Margie Tiritilli said. Most work will be done between morning and evening rush hours, Tiritilli said.

A Laguna Woods man died Sunday night after crashing into a light pole on the southbound San Diego Freeway north of the Bake Parkway exit, according to the California Highway Patrol. The crash was reported at 6:11 p.m. Finn Konsmo, 88, suffered injuries from the car's steering wheel and dashboard, said a coroner's spokesman.

Fire on the back of a one-ton flatbed truck carrying empty propane tanks caused a large rush-hour traffic jam Thursday that radiated in three directions from the southbound San Diego Freeway at Seal Beach Boulevard, authorities said. Vapors from the four-foot-wide, four-foot-long tanks caught fire about 4:30 p.m., according to the Orange County Fire Department. Firefighters extinguished the fire, which started in the truck cab.

A 24-year-old man is being sought by police in connection with a series of midmorning freeway shootings Monday that left one motorist wounded, two cars and an ambulance with bullet holes, and the California Highway Patrol searching for clues on stretches of Interstates 805 and 5. The CHP on Monday night identified Enrique Ayon as a "person of interest" in the shootings that caused the CHP to shut down stretches of the two freeways in a search for...

The army of men and machines chewed through the Sepulveda Pass, casting aside in a geological blink of an eye what had taken nature millions of years to make. From above, the Santa Monica Mountains, its crest splayed apart, looked as if it was undergoing open heart surgery. "This is the toughest highway job I've ever seen," project manager Gordon Bawden said at the time. This weekend's closure of the 405 Freeway, also known as the San Diego Freeway, through the Sepulveda Pass as part of a $1 billion widening project is being foretold as "Carmageddon" — a potential cataclysm that underscores the region's servitude to an overburdened freeway system.

Heads turned Tuesday morning on the 405 Freeway in Orange County as motorists saw a man skateboarding along the shoulder during rush hour after his black Nissan coupe ran out of gas. Motorists began calling the California Highway Patrol about 8:15 a.m. with reports that a man was skateboarding on the southbound shoulder near Red Hill Avenue in Costa Mesa, said CHP Officer Denise Quesada. The officer who responded found the driver standing with his thumb out and holding an empty gas can. The officer called the Freeway Service Patrol.

It was, unfortunately, all about the method. Method acting? Not exactly. But there was a method behind Lindsey Jacobellis' decision to method grab on the second-to-last jump of the snowboard cross course at the Winter Olympics four years ago. With the gold medal thisclose, she fell, but nevertheless had the presence to gather herself, get up and make the podium, winning a silver medal at Turin, Italy. The ensuing, and fierce, reaction was an interesting case study.

Maybe the last time a San Diego Freeway construction project got this much attention was back in the 1950s, when a man named L. Ewing Scott was convicted of murdering his socialite wife. According to urban legend, he hid her body in the newly poured concrete of the Sunset Boulevard offramp (northbound) of the San Diego Freeway. More than half a century later, L.A.'s Westside is all atwitter over the 405, but not about anything so gruesome as a corpse: It's the immense task of adding 10 miles of HOV lane to the northbound 405 over Sepulveda Pass, completing a carpool link from the Valley to the O.C. The man in charge?

Transportation officials are about to embark on major construction of a $1-billion widening of the 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass, the final leg in their campaign to create continuous carpool lanes between Orange County and the San Fernando Valley. But they admit that a relatively small percentage of commuters will share in the full benefits of the project. The extra lane will allow carpoolers and some drivers of hybrid vehicles to traverse the entire 405 -- from the 5 Freeway in Irvine to the 5 Freeway near Sylmar -- using carpool lanes.

Construction began Friday on the last leg of a carpool lane for the northbound San Diego Freeway through western Los Angeles, a $1-billion project designed to ease congestion on one of the busiest traffic corridors in the nation.

A field trip to the La Brea Tar Pits on Saturday morning ended in an emergency triage scene for 124 middle school students when their two school buses collided on the northbound San Diego Freeway on the Westside. Twenty-three Lennox Middle School students were treated for bruises, scratches and pains at local hospitals and were all released to relatives by Saturday afternoon, according to the California Highway Patrol.