Foto: APLos Angeles, a city renowned for its traffic is about to face a jam of biblical proportions.
"Carmageddon" is the name Los Angeles residents are giving the inevitable and likely epic traffic tie-up that will result when a 10-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway is closed for construction from Friday night to Monday morning between two of the nation's busiest interchanges.
The unprecedented 53-hour shutdown, expected to delay motorists for hours on alternate routes with ripple effects on about a dozen other major highways, will allow crews to demolish a bridge as part of a $1 billion freeway-widening project.
In a sign that few motorists in America's second-largest city take a breezy attitude toward the closure, Los Angeles plans to open its emergency operations center over the weekend.
This being Hollywood, officials have recruited a gaggle of celebrities to warn motorists of the impending gridlock, including newly cast "Two and a Half Men" star Ashton Kutcher and "CHiPs" actor Erik Estrada. The main message: Stay away!
That message has inspired a number of leisure destinations outside Los Angeles to offer special "Escape Carmageddon" discount packages, from a Mammoth Mountain hotel in the Eastern Sierras to a hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
Prepare Yourself For 'Carmageddon'
But most people who live and work in and around the gridlock zone have no choice but to hunker down for the weekend.
In an "Over-the-405" promotion launched on Wednesday by JetBlue Airways, the discount airline offered special nonstop flights between Long Beach and Burbank for Saturday priced at just $4 each way, taxes and fees included.
Charter helicopter companies are selling air "taxi" service to Los Angeles International Airport for well-heeled L.A. travelers fearful of missing pre-booked airline flights to more distant destinations.
Los Angeles Get Ready for 405 Closure
The stretch of the 405 Freeway that will be closed, known locally as the Sepulveda Pass, is traversed by about 500,000 vehicles on a typical summer weekend, said Marc Littman, a spokesman for Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), an agency handling the project.
Erik Estrada Advises L.A. Drivers to Avoid 405 Freeway
The 405, a U.S. interstate route that runs from Irvine, California, north to the Mission Hills district of Los Angeles, is perhaps best known outside L.A. for the widely televised low-speed police chase of O.J. Simpson, then suspected in the murder of his ex-wife, in June 1994.
