Coliseum Officials Protest Closure of Harbor Freeway Ramps : Roads: Caltrans is asked to revise its reconstruction schedule. Commissioners say the current plan will snarl traffic at Raiders, Clippers and USC games.

The Los Angeles Coliseum Commission is predicting traffic chaos on Raiders, Clippers and USC game days if Caltrans continues the recent closure of the vital Harbor Freeway off-ramps at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard for as long as nine months.

The Coliseum Commission decided Wednesday to appeal for a hearing in which it can try to persuade Caltrans officials either to speed the current reconstruction of the freeway, which is to provide car-pool lanes and a transitway, or to open the off-ramps on days when games or events are held.

Officials of USC and the Museum of Science and Industry have joined Coliseum officials in complaining about the closure, which occurred about 10 days ago, without them being notified. Coliseum commissioner Bill Robertson called the ramp closures “very restrictive to our tenants, the Raiders, USC and the Clippers” and voiced fears that concert promoters may stay away from the Coliseum and Sports Arena until the ramps are open.

Margaret Farnham, the commission’s administrative officer, said that at previous meetings on the freeway project, Caltrans personnel had said nothing about protracted closures and predicted that any problems would be taken care of on game days.

When she heard about the closure, “I complained dramatically,” Farnham told the commission meeting.

Frank Quon, a Caltrans chief of project development, responded Wednesday, “I’m not aware of any assurances by us that the closures would not occur.”

But Quon and Mike Perovich, a senior Caltrans engineer who has conferred with Coliseum officials, said an internal review meeting will be held today at the agency to consider what alternatives there may be to the long ramp closures.

They said there are hopes that the northbound off-ramp at King Boulevard could be completed by September, but the southbound off-ramp is more complicated and will take longer.

Farnham told a Coliseum Commission meeting that she has been told that Caltrans may work double shifts on the project to speed it up, but neither Quon nor Perovich said anything about that Wednesday.

The potential traffic tangles come at a time when a $15-million Coliseum renovation to lower the field and bring seats closer to the playing action is nearing completion. The first USC and Raiders games in the facility are scheduled for Sept. 4 and 5, respectively.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, acting commission president, said Wednesday that she and other supervisors may pressure Caltrans to revise its plans.

Some critics of the plan have pointed out that Caltrans managed to avoid lengthy ramp closures during the recently completed Ventura Freeway widening in the San Fernando Valley.

Quon, however, said that the Harbor Freeway runs in a very narrow corridor and there is less room for detours that would allow keeping the ramps open.

“A very significant widening must be done to accommodate the transitway,” the Caltrans official said. “It entails pushing the state’s right of way out quite a distance and requires the complete reconstruction of the existing on- and off-ramps.”

Quon said Caltrans intends to keep the Exposition Boulevard ramps open during the King ramp closures.

But Thomas H. Moran, USC’s vice president for business affairs, said that Caltrans has rerouted northbound traffic getting off the freeway at Exposition onto 37th Street, and he called this a “pretty dramatic inconvenience” for USC.