LA gets ready for 'carmageddon'

16 July 2011 Last updated at 11:32 GMT The BBC's Alastair Leithead: This bridge is what all the fuss is about

Los Angeles residents are bracing for "carmageddon", the severe traffic jams that could result from the closure of a key stretch of highway during one of the city's busiest weekends.

Interstate 405, the main artery through the city, closed at midnight on Friday, for work expected to take 53 hours.

Workers plan to add more lanes to a 10-mile (16km) section of the freeway.

Los Angeles has recruited celebrities with large Twitter followings to warn residents of the closure.

Transport officials say the highway is being closed to replace the 50-year-old Mulholland Bridge, as part of a $1bn (£600m) project to add additional lanes to a bottlenecked segment of the highway.

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The wildcard is if the engineers don't manage to open the freeway back up after two days”

End Quote Genevieve Giuliano Professor of urban planning, University of Southern California Gridlock expected With the impending chaos from the closure - which has been dubbed "carmageddon" - expected to grind traffic to a halt on side streets and freeways, some have pledged to walk and others say they will take to the skies.

During the days leading up to the closure, helicopter taxi rides were being sold for $150 (£93) to passengers hoping to get to Los Angeles International Airport during the weekend, and 10-minute flights between Burbank and Los Angeles were being offered by JetBlue for $4 per ticket.

City officials have been issuing bleak traffic warnings to Southern California residents for weeks, reminiscent of flood and wildfire warnings.

Mike Miles of the California Department of Transportation said traffic could be backed up for more than 100km.

"You cannot close a road that carries close to 500,000 people a day on it and not expect problems," he said.

Mr Miles warned that roads could become dangerous if drivers tempted fate and battled their way through the jams.

But some California residents are sceptical about the city's warnings.

"It's possible that they are trying to scare everyone [into] staying off the roads so gridlock won't happen," said Los Angeles resident Lorelei Laird.

Workers will be adding additional lanes to some sections of Interstate 405

"I don't expect it to be the bumper-to-bumper nightmare that people are expecting," she added.

Some transport experts have compared the shutdown to other large planned events in the region, like the 1984 summer Olympics, Los Angeles Lakers championship parades and Michael Jackson's memorial service - events when Los Angeles residents stayed off the roads.

Just like now, "people had advanced notice to get off the roads during the Olympics", said Genevieve Giuliano, a professor of urban planning and policy at University of Southern California.

"The wildcard is that if the engineers don't manage to open up the freeway back up after two days," she added.

The city of Los Angeles asked several celebrities, like Tom Hanks and Ashton Kutcher, to warn Los Angeles residents about carmageddon through the micro-blogging website Twitter.

"This weekend, LA! Avoid Carmageddon, Gas-zilla, 405-enstein, Grid-lock-apalooza! STAY HOME. Eat & shop local," Hanks wrote.

Facebook also agreed to direct some 6.6 million Los Angeles area residents to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's Facebook page for information on avoiding the traffic.