Everyone in Southern California is shivering in terror about this weekend's planned closing of the 405 Freeway. Portions of a bridge have to be demolished and they're closing the thoroughfare on Friday night after the rush hour traffic. It's supposed to reopen at 5 AM Monday morning and the firm doing the work will pay steep fines if this does not happen — $6,000 for every ten minutes they're late…and that's per side. So if both sides of the freeway reopen ten minutes late, that's $12,000. Sounds to me like the construction company is pretty confident…but an awful lot of folks are acting like the 405 could be closed for days after.
I don't think so. Admittedly, things could go wrong…but hey, that freeway has been known to shut down for hours when some truck jack-knifes and dumps a load of rutabagas. Somehow, the world survives. It all feels to me suspiciously like the hype that preceded the '84 Olympics in Los Angeles when we were told that gridlocked traffic would prevent any of us from getting our cars out of our driveways until weeks after the last game. Or the big Y2K panic when we were cautioned that every computer, ATM, timepiece and socket wrench would shut down at the stroke of Midnight. Didn't happen. "Carmageddon," as they're calling this bridge demolition, is starting to sound like one of those media-hyped doomsday scenarios that doesn't live up to its billing.
So that's what I think. However, I must confess that I have no plans to go near that part of the 405 for a month or so.