Contracts for a second stage have not yet been awarded. The second stage of the project will consist of a tunnel/bridge over Agoura Road; a tunnel/bridge structure over the service road Vendell Place to serve as a utility tunnel; and fill, grade and landscape between the bridge over U.S. 101 and the tunnel over Agoura Road.
(Caltrans photo)
A construction project that will result in the largest wildlife crossing of its kind in the United States is back on track, according to officials.
Construction crews from C. A. Rasmussen Inc. and Caltrans are making steady progress on the 175-ft. wide crossing spanning 10 lanes of the 101 Freeway at Agora Hills.
Despite heavy rainfall washing out numerous days of work earlier on in the project schedule, the project is still on track for its original planned finish. Since breaking ground in April 2022, construction crews were slowed by severe rainstorms from late 2022 into earlier this year.
Because construction schedules built in time for inclement weather when crews could not work, Caltrans Spokesman Michael Comeaux said that the estimated completion time for the entire project is still set for the end of 2025.
The total cost of the project, including studies, designs and permitting, at $92 million, according to officials.
Progress on the crossing continued during the much drier summer, including a massive concrete pour that amounted to 850 tons of concrete or enough to build approximately 100 patios, according to Caltrans.
"We are glad things are going well and are hopeful to meet the completion date," Comeaux said.
"They have been pouring concrete and getting the abutment pillars up," said Beth Pratt, California regional executive director of the National Wildlife Federation, the group that spearheaded the project. "By fall, we should see the skeleton of the horizontal structure going up, the actual bridge structure."
Landscape architects will vegetate the concrete crossing with 4 ft. of soil and plant locally collected seeds for grasses and plants.
"It will look like the mountains will have come back over the freeway," Pratt said.
Vegetative sound walls will keep the freeway din to a minimum, otherwise wild critters will stay away and not use it. Light from car headlights also will be blocked out.
"You have to trick them into thinking they are not going over a freeway," Pratt said.
The crossing will be built over a freeway that accommodates 300,000 to 400,000 vehicles per day."
Contracts for a second stage have not yet been awarded. The second stage of the project will consist of a tunnel/bridge over Agoura Road; a tunnel/bridge structure over the service road Vendell Place to serve as a utility tunnel; and fill, grade and landscape between the bridge over U.S. 101 and the tunnel over Agoura Road. The schedule for Stage 2 is being developed.
Project Need
The wildlife crossing connects two mountain lion roaming grounds, the Santa Monica Mountains and the Sierra Madre Range. It removes the large freeway barrier, allowing mountain lions as well as bobcats, deer, coyotes even birds and butterflies to safely cross, going from the Santa Monica range into the Simi Hills and Santa Susana Mountains to the north of the 101 Freeway.
Freeway crossings have resulted in more than 35 mountain lion deaths. The most famous cougar, P-22, miraculously crossed the 101 and 405 Freeways making Griffith Park his home for 10 years until his death in December 2022, ironically from a vehicle-strike.
The massive crossing was first spearheaded by Caltrans, the National Park Service and the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to provide wildlife with a safe place to cross into other habitats. The current campaign for the wildlife crossing was launched in 2012.
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