Residents and Drivers Brace for a Headache : Roads: Rebuilding a 2.1-mile stretch of Benedict Canyon Drive is expected to divert thousands to already-clogged freeways and neighboring streets.

In what is expected to cause a prolonged traffic headache for thousands of Los Angeles commuters, Benedict Canyon Drive will close for about four months starting in mid-August while construction crews rebuild a 2.1-mile stretch of the crumbling canyon roadway.

The $1.1-million project will divert thousands of drivers between the Westside and the San Fernando Valley to already-packed freeways and neighboring thoroughfares.

Particularly hard hit will be the parallel canyon roads--Beverly Glen and Laurel Canyon boulevards, Coldwater Canyon Drive and Roscomare Road--and the main east-west roads at the top and bottom of the canyons, Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard. The Benedict Canyon closure comes when traffic woes have become the major concern of the affluent hillside residents between Sunset and Ventura boulevards.

“It’s not going to be ‘Apocalypse Now,’ but it is going to be bad,” said Capt. Vance Proctor, commander of the traffic division for the western division of the Los Angeles Police Department. “There will definitely be an increase in traffic on other roads and it will tack on extra long hours during the commute period.”

Despite the hardship, Benedict Canyon homeowners support the city’s plans to rebuild the road from Hutton Drive to the Beverly Hills city limits because the highway is filled with huge potholes and gaping cracks. City engineers say the road has deteriorated so much that patchwork repairs would be useless and they are concerned about motorists’ safety.

The Benedict Canyon Homeowners Assn. held several meetings with city officials to work out project details, including the best time to resurface the road. Although all agreed the best time to start would be in July, when most schools are out, federal money was not available so the project was delayed.

“The road is in poor condition and it has needed to be resurfaced for years,” said Fred Hamer, president of the homeowners group. “There’s no doubt it will cause some problems, but the long-term benefits make it worth it.”

Nonetheless, neighboring canyon homeowners are dreading the coming months. Already complaining that it sometimes takes 10 minutes to get out of their driveways into the bumper-to-bumper commute traffic, they predict that even simple trips to the store will take twice as long.

“It’s going to aggravate a bad situation substantially,” said Gerald Haims, a member of the Coldwater Canyon Homeowners Assn. “It’s a great concern for all of us who live here. It’s going to be a very, very irritating time.

“The real problem is not the people who live in the canyons--they are very tolerant of each other. But that’s not true of the commuter traffic. Even when the cars are at a dead standstill, they won’t even let you in.”

Tentatively scheduled to begin in mid-August, the first part of the project calls for the reconstruction of Benedict Canyon between the Beverly Hills city boundary and Hillgrove Drive. Once the work begins, the canyon road will be closed by barricades between Hillgrove and Mulholland drives, with only homeowners, service people, visitors and emergency vehicles allowed through.

Traffic officials will give Benedict Canyon residents three access permits for their cars and a private access code. Service people and visitors will be required to give a correct address and matching access code to be admitted by security officials at the barricades.

Traffic signals on parts of Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard will be adjusted to compensate for the heavier traffic, and extra police officers will be assigned to the area.

“People will make adjustments and you find that in cases like this, traffic isn’t as bad as you might expect,” said Brian Griffith, district engineer for the project. “There are going to be areas where no matter what we try to do, there’s going to be more congestion.

Griffith, however, acknowledges that the size and the length of the project pose special problems for residents with high levels of traffic intolerance.

“We’re talking about a different order of magnitude to hold the line for four months, as opposed to six weeks for most projects,” Griffith said.

As an added incentive to finish the project within four months, the contractor, Security Paving Co., has a clause in its contract that will earn the company $5,000 for each day the job is finished early. If the project runs over schedule, the company will be penalized $2,000 per day.

Canyon residents and city traffic officials say they will do whatever they can to move the project along as quickly as possible.

“They did a similar thing on Beverly Glen and everybody survived,” Proctor said, referring to a 1988 project. “It’s not going to be an easy time and I know a lot of people are concerned. But still, I can’t imagine it would be any worse” than driving on the San Diego Freeway.