Plans Target Traffic Near Universal

After more than a decade of discussion and three years of study, a task force charged with finding ways to relieve maddening traffic congestion around Universal Studios has recommended a package of improvements, including widening a freeway overpass and the narrow streets that border it.

Officials have already applied for nearly $10 million in state and federal funding for four of 10 proposals contained in the draft environmental impact report.

“This very definitely is an important stage,” said Ken Weary, assistant deputy director for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works and a member of the group that drew up the plan.

“We’re now focused on those [options] that make the most sense. So it’s a significant step.”

The aim, said committee members, is to improve traffic flow for the estimated 60,000 vehicles that traverse the cramped roadways daily near the Hollywood Freeway, from Hollywood Boulevard on the south to just north and east of Universal City.

The committee looked at a number of aggressive approaches to dealing with the bottlenecks that vex area residents, alternatives such as widening Barham Boulevard north of the freeway. But traffic consultants and engineers determined that in many cases, those steps would worsen the problem by attracting more drivers into the compact corridor, committee members said.

“People are looking for a way to get back and forth from the basin to the Valley,” said Rick Pruetz, Burbank’s city planner, who also worked on the report. “The [traffic study] model tells us that the more we built, the more traffic would fill up that extra capacity.”

To improve traffic flow without attracting additional traffic, the committee is backing a plan that would:

* Widen the Barham bridge over the Hollywood Freeway, from 48 to 60 feet, and widen Cahuenga Boulevard West so a second left-turn lane could be added. Those two projects would improve traffic flow from Cahuenga West across the bridge and onto Barham.

* Widen Cahuenga Boulevard East by using an abandoned freeway offramp to create an additional northbound through-lane to Coral Drive.

* Improve three Burbank intersections: Hollywood Way and Riverside Drive, Hollywood Way and Alameda Avenue, and Buena Vista Street and Alameda.

Several of the 10 proposed improvements are included among the traffic mitigations Universal Studios would be required to complete as part of its proposed master plan expansion. However, that controversial building program has been placed on hold while Universal, which is in the throes of a corporate reorganization, evaluates how to proceed.

“We are still evaluating our next step,” said a Universal spokesperson.

Officials decided not to seek public funding for Universal-related items--including a proposed onramp to the southbound Hollywood Freeway from Universal Center Drive--while the massive expansion project is still up in the air.

A public hearing on the draft environmental impact report on the project, which had been scheduled for next Wednesday, was canceled after some community groups, including the Cahuenga Pass Neighborhood Assn., objected to having to give opinions about the proposed projects without knowing how Universal will fit in.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles City Council President John Ferraro has asked the group working on the project to try to find funds for a feasibility study of the ramp and has extended the public comment period on the project indefinitely.

Some of the 10 projects already have received municipal approval. However, projects that involve work on or around the Hollywood Freeway would also need the blessing of the California Department of Transportation.