Skeptics of River Road Bail Out at Storm Drain

It is rush hour, 1995, and you are stuck in traffic on a new, limited access expressway in the Los Angeles River bed. It starts to rain, hard. Water begins to trickle down from the lip of a storm drain notched in the concrete river bank above you. You have five miles to go before the next exit.

Relax, says Assemblyman Richard Katz. The rain will stay mainly in the drain.

Katz, a Panorama City Democrat, has become the champion of the river-bottom expressway, one of the more novel approaches to traffic congestion to come down the pike in recent years. At a river’s-edge press conference Thursday, Katz pictured a 30-mile road that would relieve adjacent freeways of 15% to 25% of their traffic load.

As Katz envisions it, the expressway would operate in two segments--a stretch reserved for buses, vans and car-poolers between the West San Fernando Valley and downtown, and a length running from downtown south to Long Beach for trucks.

At the press conference near Griffith Park, Katz spoke with his back to the river which, even now in one of the driest months of the year, has enough flow to cover the bottom with a foot of water. Katz unveiled a detailed chart that showed three lanes of traffic capable of carrying 6,000 cars an hour. Below him, in the river channel, islands of pampas grass and willows stretched out of sight, around the bend north of the Fletcher Drive overpass.

First, Katz talked about driver safety.

“Flash-flooding has never been a problem in Los Angeles,” Katz said. “We know enough about storms ahead of time to be able to avoid danger.” Katz predicted that only during the wettest two weeks of the year would the expressway have to be closed. The rest of the time, water from storm drains or side channels would be sluiced through a trough that would run down the center of the riverbed.

Three lanes of traffic would pass on one side of the trough, protected by a 10-foot wall. On the other side, a greenbelt would be planted, assuring that the plants and birds now living in the river bottom would be protected. Katz estimates the project would cost about $30 million a mile, a figure he said looks pretty good compared to the $300-million-a-mile cost projected for the first segment of the city’s Metro Rail system. One reason the expressway would be comparatively cheap to build is that much of the riverbed already is paved.

Katz said people could be driving down the riverbed by 1992 or 1993. He pointed out that driving already is permitted on portions of the riverbed--bus companies teach new drivers and the California Highway Patrol trains motorcyclists there.

The expressway proposal, which is under study by the L.A. County Transportation Commission, already is running into stiff opposition.

‘Over Our Dead Bodies’

“He’ll build it over our dead bodies. The L.A. River is not a freeway,” said Lewis MacAdams, co-founder of Friends of the Los Angeles River. MacAdams says the river’s wildlife, including mallards, great blue herons and red-winged blackbirds, would be imperiled.

MacAdams prefers Mayor Tom Bradley’s plan for the river, which calls for turning it into a greenbelt complete with bike paths and riding trails.

Deputy Mayor Mike Gage said the riverbed freeway would create “havoc and mayhem.”

“What do you think would happen on those rainy days when you couldn’t drive in the riverbed? All that traffic dumped back on the freeways. I think you would shut them down,” said Gage, a one-time white-water river guide.

Katz is prepared for such hostility: “I know what people will say. ‘There they go again in Southern California.’ ”

The assemblyman admitted that the idea is a bit “rough” at the moment, but he said it is an example of the kind of creative thinking needed to solve the region’s transportation problems. And he encouraged people to write to him with any ideas they might have.

Strong Skepticism

Some of the skepticism over the expressway plan comes from people who are quite familiar with the river.

Don Nichols, chief of the water conservation division of the Los Angeles County Public Works Department, said he is not sure how quickly or accurately experts can predict flash-flood conditions.

“We read the same forecasts you do. We do have a consultant in Goleta. Maybe, that gives us an edge,” Nichols said.

“There are dozens and dozens of storm drains all along the river, as well as major channels. All of them spit water into the river,” he said.

(The storm drains and sewage treatment plants are the major sources of water in the river.)

Added Nichols: “I don’t see how you could do it (build the expressway) without major modifications that would somehow take the flows and reroute them.”

Before Katz spoke Thursday, Arthur Stuart, who works at a Department of Water and Power receiving station beside the river, made his skepticism known.

“What are you going to do with all that water?” Stuart asked. “I’ve seen it get 10 feet high,” he said, pointing out a water mark on the concrete bank. “I’ve seen cars floating down it.”