At a community meeting in Agoura Hills Thursday evening about construction on the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing Bridge, city leaders and officials from Caltrans wanted to get one message across loud and clear: the 101 Freeway is closing down.
The massive wildlife crossing bridge will connect two natural landscapes that have been bisected by one of the nation’s busiest highways, stretching over 200 feet long and 165 feet wide across the roadway.
Starting Monday, Caltrans will close all lanes of the southbound 101 Freeway between Chesebro Road and Liberty Canyon Road, with the closures running Monday-Friday from midnight to 5 a.m. for at least several weeks.
A map of the area provided by Caltrans shows that travelers and commuters will be diverted onto side streets in the area during the construction.
“There could be, and we expect there to be more traffic at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. than there is,” Agoura Hills Public Works Director Jessica Forte said. “Just be more aware if you’re going to be out jogging or biking on Agoura Road.”
The shutdown is so crews can lift dozens of heavy concrete beams that will form the skeleton of the crossing.
Once that work, which is expected to take about a month, is completed, Caltrans will close northbound lanes overnight to in the same section. That phase of construction is expected to begin sometime after fall.
“Honestly, at the beginning, I figured I’d have some noise for two to three years and it’s a fair trade,” Sherry Ferber told KTLA’s Samantha Cortese.
A Liberty Canyon resident for 25 years, Ferber believes the inconvenience of the project is worth it.
“We’re saving an entire species locally,” she said. “It’s the number one cause of death for mountain lions, plus it’s benefitting all species in the Sana Monica Mountains.”
Once completed, the bridge will connect the Santa Susana and Santa Monica mountains ranges and will be the largest wildlife crossing of its kind in the country, providing mountain lions and other animals safe passage between the regions.
Scientists say this will minimize inbreeding among the wildlife population.
“We have the science that the mountain lions, bobcats and the coyotes come right up to the 101 and they go back,” Agoura Hills Mayor Illece Buckley Weber said. “They smart enough not to cross, and that’s one of the problems. We need them to cross back and forth between the Santa Monica Mountains.”
Coming in at an estimated $92 million, the crossing is one of the largest infrastructure projects underway in Southern California and scheduled to be completed in 2025.