cool...I will be providing live updates from the middle of this.
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A city renowned for its traffic is about to face a jam of biblical proportions.
"Carmageddon" is the name Los Angeles residents are giving the inevitable and likely epic traffic tie-up that will result when a 10-mile stretch of the 405 Freeway is closed for construction from Friday night to Monday morning between two of the nation's busiest interchanges.
The unprecedented 53-hour shutdown, expected to delay motorists for hours on alternate routes with ripple effects on about a dozen other major highways, will allow crews to demolish a bridge as part of a $1 billion freeway-widening project.
In a sign that few motorists in America's second-largest city take a breezy attitude toward the closure, Los Angeles plans to open its emergency operations center over the weekend. And L.A.'s public transit agency will provide free service on 26 bus lines and three of its five light-rail lines.
This being Hollywood, officials have recruited several celebrities to warn motorists of the impending gridlock, including pop star Lady Gaga, newly cast "Two and a Half Men" star Ashton Kutcher and "CHiPs" actor Erik Estrada. Their main message: Stay away, or at least stay off the roads.
As Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa once predicted, "It will be an absolute nightmare."
That message has inspired a number of leisure destinations outside Los Angeles to offer special "Escape Carmageddon" discount packages, from a Mammoth Mountain hotel in the Eastern Sierras to a hotel-casino in Las Vegas.
But most people who live and work in and around the gridlock zone have no choice but to hunker down for the weekend.
The UCLA Medical Center on the city's upscale westside has secured 600 dorms and apartments as temporary quarters for hospital staff as part of an emergency plan to prevent doctors and nurses from getting stuck in traffic.
"We see this as being a disaster -- only it's a planned disaster," said Posie Carpenter, the medical center's chief administrative officer.
The Getty Center, a popular art museum nestled in the hills above the 405 Freeway, has said it will be closed to visitors this weekend because of the construction project.
BOOKING A HOTEL
Lisa McGuinness is going to stay in a hotel for three nights near the deli she owns near the north end of the shutdown, rather than risk stewing in traffic for hours with a commute from her home 30 miles away in Los Angeles' South Bay community of Torrance.
"The freeway stresses me out every day," she said. "With this, I'm just thinking we just have to stay out of it. I just can't even imagine what the streets are going to be like."
In an "Over-the-405" promotion launched on Wednesday by JetBlue Airways, the discount airline offered special nonstop flights between Long Beach and Burbank for Saturday priced at just $4 each way, taxes and fees included.
