CAR-POOL LANES ON TRACK JULY COMPLETION SEEN FOR FREEWAY PROJECT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

ACTON - Construction workers are nearing completion of 10.5 miles of Antelope Valley Freeway car-pool lanes between Agua Dulce and Acton.

Caltrans officials tentatively projected that the lanes between Escondido Canyon Road and Mountain Springs Road will be finished in July at a cost of about $28 million, said state Department of Transportation spokeswoman Judy Gish.

``This will relieve congestion in all lanes and reduce accident rates,'' Gish said.

Caltrans plans to close the southbound freeway lanes Friday and Saturday nights to work on the new lanes.

The southbound freeway lanes will be closed from Crown Valley Road to Escondido Canyon Road from 10 p.m. Friday to 8 a.m. Saturday and again from 10 p.m. Saturday to 8 a.m. Sunday.

The closures are required to complete the transitions between roadway pavement and bridges, officials said.

The lane closures will likely occur over the next four to seven weekends, Caltrans said. Work remaining to be done includes slab work on bridges, the installation of median barriers, lane striping, and landscaping.

Lane striping work will depend on weather. There needs to be at least a 50-degree temperature for both the air and the pavement in order for the striping adhesives to stick, Gish said. Caltrans will need 10 or more nights with those conditions to complete the striping work.

In other developments on Antelope Valley Freeway issues, civic leaders picked up a pledge of support Wednesday from Roger Snoble, the chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority, to come up with a plan to keep two freeway projects from being delayed in a state transportation plan.

Trying to stretch the limited dollars it has for projects, the California Transportation Commission planned to delay two Antelope Valley Freeway improvement projects listed in its 2002 State Transportation Improvement Program.

One of the deferred projects is the addition of a car-pool lane in each direction between Avenue P-8 and Avenue I. Under the plan, this will be postponed from 2003 to 2007. The project was estimated to cost $31.9 million.

The second proposed construction, a reconfiguration of the Avenue I interchange, will be deferred from 2005 to 2006. The estimated cost of that project is $8.3 million.

Antelope Valley officials said the proposed delays are unacceptable, given how important the freeway is to commuters and because the delays could add as much as $11 million to the car-pool-lane project and $800,000 to the Avenue I interchange project.

``We're going to be working frantically to keep those projects from being set back,'' said Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts, an MTA board member.

The State Transportation Improvement Program is a five-year plan based on estimates of how much money will be available for highway projects and when those funds would be available.

As projects were nominated for funding, regional planning agencies and the state Department of Transportation wanted them scheduled in the first years of the plan. Tax dollars for projects, however, were expected to be more plentiful toward the later years of the program, CTC officials said.

There could be adjustments made to the state transportation improvements plan during CTC meetings in June and July. However, if a project were to be moved to the earlier years of the plan, a trade-off would have to be made by delaying another project or projects, CTC officials said.

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(ran in AV edition only) ANTELOPE VALLEY FREEWAY CAR-POOL LANE CONSTRUCTION