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405 Freeway fully open after Sepulveda Pass paving finishes early

By Rong-Gong Lin II
 and Corina Knoll
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All lanes of the 405 Freeway in the Sepulveda Pass are open to traffic after crews finished repaving work 29 hours ahead of schedule, a Metropolitan Transportation Authority official said Sunday.

Lane closures on the 2.4-mile stretch between the Montana Avenue entrance ramp and the Getty Center Drive exit ramp began Friday and all northbound lanes were closed overnight to allow for additional paving crews.

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For most of Saturday, only two of the five northbound lanes were open, forcing up to a 75-minute delay, said Dave Sotero of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Those lanes reopened Saturday at midnight.

The warmer weather -- Los Angeles International Airport hit a high of 82 on Saturday, a record for the date -- allowed construction crews to begin laying new pavement as soon as they finished grinding up the old roadway. The contractor also doubled up on the grinding work overnight, said Sotero.

“Our focus was working with CalTrans and the contractor to get the job done as quickly as we possibly could,” he said. “Now we can spare motorists from traffic grief.”

The roadwork is part of a project to add a carpool lane on the northbound 405 through the Sepulveda Pass, one of the nation’s busiest freeways.

In addition to laying down more pavement to accommodate a wider freeway, crews restriped the freeway and moved the concrete rails. ‘This part of the 405 is shifting 30 feet to the west. That’s going to create the room for us to create the extra lane of traffic,’ Sotero said.

The 405 is the only highway that connects the Westside directly to the San Fernando Valley through the Santa Monica Mountains.

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-- Rong-Gong Lin II and Corina Knoll

L.A. Now
Rong-Gong Lin II

Rong-Gong Lin II is a Metro reporter based in San Francisco who specializes in covering statewide earthquake safety issues and the COVID-19 pandemic. The Bay Area native is a graduate of UC Berkeley and started at the Los Angeles Times in 2004.

Corina Knoll

Corina Knoll is a former reporter for the Metro section of the Los Angeles Times. She was on the team that investigated corruption in Bell — which led to the paper’s 2011 Pulitzer Prize for public service — and went on to cover the trials of the city’s former officials. She later contributed to the paper’s coverage of the San Bernardino terror attack that won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. As a regional reporter, she wrote features about the San Gabriel Valley and the Westside. During her courts beat, she covered high-profile criminal cases and civil disputes, including the Jackson family vs AEG and Bryan Stow vs LA Dodgers. She and two colleagues investigated sheriff’s deputies whose histories of misconduct landed them on the department’s top-secret Brady list. She left The Times in January 2019. Raised in the Midwest, she is a graduate of Macalester College.

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