Traveling onto the Harbor Boulevard/Vincent Thomas Bridge offramp in San Pedro from the southbound 110 Freeway can be a daunting experience.
Motorists heading onto Harbor Boulevard or over the bridge to Long Beach often find themselves jockeying for lane space with lines of large trucks carrying containers as they prepare to get to the Port of Los Angeles terminals.
But in few years, that could change.
The Los Angeles harbor commission recently approved some additional design costs for a long-anticipated interchange overhaul that would separate truck and automobile traffic, a project that is expected to be complete in December 2026.
“Trying to get on the (Vincent Thomas) Bridge or Harbor Boulevard, you sit for 20 minutes,” Commissioner Anthony Pirozzi said during the panel’s meeting last week. “I just saw a line of trucks yesterday. And Front Street also gets backed up.”
Commissioners voted to add $2.5 million to the design services agreement and to increase the design services agreement timeline.
The total cost of the project is expected to be $110 million.
The ambitious overhaul of the interchange that connects the Vincent Thomas Bridge (State Route 47), Front Street and Harbor Boulevard to the southbound 110 Freeway has been on the drawing board for years.
The plan is to break up and better manage the traffic flow in the area, which is known for heavy congestion and often creating a bottleneck at San Pedro’s busy waterfront. And with more traffic anticipated for the port’s growing pleasure cruise industry and a new waterfront development set to open on Harbor Boulevard in late 2024, finding ways to separate automobile and truck traffic quickly became the aim.
Construction is now expected to begin in December. Utility relocations are already underway.
While there will be some closures at existing on- and offramps, construction is planned to be phased so that there will be minimal impacts, port officials have said.
Safety and congestion issues have led the concerns, with automobiles and trucks jockeying to merge through what is a short transition — leading to backups and crashes during peak times.
The design calls for the existing Harbor Boulevard offramp that takes cars and trucks off the southbound 110 Freeway to be widened with a second dedicated right-hand lane, leaving one lane to take traffic straight across Harbor Boulevard and onto Swinford Street, with merging distances also to be extended.
The project will also create a new offramp heading north, passing over the now-closed dog park at the base of Knoll Hill, 700 N. Front St., and lining up with the terminal entrances, separating port truck traffic from automobile traffic.
“I really like this project,” Pirozzi, an engineer, said during the Thursday, March 30, commission meeting, “and it’s not just because of the engineering. I really love it for the community. It’s going to make a huge difference.”