Carmageddon II has a date: weekend of Sept. 28

Metro has decided when to drop the other shoe on the necessary weekend closure of the entire 405 Freeway through the Sepulveda Pass. The follow-up to last summer's disruptive but successful closure will begin about 7 p.m. on Friday, September 28. The freeway will be scheduled to reopen at 5 a.m. on Monday, October 1. But as we saw last summer, it's possible the lanes will reopen early.

In any case, officials will once again try to convince you — and much of the West Coast — to curtail driving that weekend. The closure will extend from the Santa Monica Freeway, I-10, to the Ventura Freeway, U.S. 101 in the Valley. From Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky's news website:

The planned 53-hour closure of the freeway is needed to dismantle the north side of the Mulholland Bridge over the 405. The south side was demolished last summer, but it has taken longer than expected to rebuild, leading to delays in scheduling Carmageddon II.

Picking a suitable weekend meant juggling around big dates like the start of the fall quarter at UCLA (September 24) and transporting the Space Shuttle Endeavor from LAX to the California Science Center in Exposition Park (likely sometime in October.)

The weekend of September 29-30 “was the least impact, that we could tell,” said Mike Barbour, who’s heading up the project for Metro.

Previous stories on the 405 project

Video: One minute on the 405