ROADBLOCK BYPASSED IN 101-405 FUNDING.

Byline: Douglas Haberman Daily News Staff Writer

A possible delay in approving gridlock-easing work on the 101-405 interchange and other state highways was averted Thursday, officials said.

The California Transportation Commission voted to move ahead with the funding deliberations, despite a request for delay from state legislators.

``Basically we dodged the bullet today,'' Assemblyman Wally Knox, D-Los Angeles, said. His district includes the interchange, and he has been pushing for funding of the improvements so groundbreaking could occur this year.

California Transportation Commissioner David Fleming said he believes Knox is too optimistic. Even when the interchange wins funding, it will still take at least two years for construction to start, between the necessary design work and a required environmental impact report, he said.

Fleming proposed that legislators and the commission try to find a way to declare the project and others so urgent it no longer requires an environmental impact report.

``We can't wait two years to get this thing solved,'' said Fleming, a prominent San Fernando Valley attorney and civic leader. ``The people shouldn't have to.''

Thursday's action keeps the process heading toward a March 29 vote on funding state highway projects. The $13.1 million in improvements to the 101-405 interchange will be among those projects, Fleming said. ``It'll be funded,'' he said.

The interchange is the fourth busiest in the state, according to the California Department of Transportation, with an average of 536,000 cars a day passing through.

The possible roadblock to the improvements came when the new chairman of the Assembly Transportation Committee, Assemblyman Tom Torlakson, D-Martinez, and state senators asked to delay funding deliberations so Gov. Gray Davis' administration could have time to study the proposals.

Fleming said Davis was consulted, and ``the governor sent us a communique . . . saying, Go ahead.''

So at a meeting Thursday afternoon in La Quinta, near Palm Springs, the commission voted to move ahead.

Knox addressed the commission through a letter and in person, asking that it not allow any delays.

``It's the kind of thing you have to dog every step of the way,'' he said in a telephone interview afterward.

Knox was recently named chairman of a special Assembly committee that will look into the acute congestion at the 101-405 interchange. The committee is tentatively planning to hold a hearing in Los Angeles on Feb. 9, with the location and time yet to be determined.

On Jan. 28, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board is scheduled to vote on a staff proposal to put up $2.6 million as a local match for the 101-405 interchange project. Such a match is meant to boost the project's chances of getting funded, officials said.