"Carmageddon" may be over, but, according to commuters who contacted NBC 4, traffic on the 405 has been worse since its re-opening on Sunday.
NBC 4 sent reporter Mekahlo Medina out onto the 405 to experience the slowdown, starting south of the 101 freeway.
“We are already hitting traffic, lots of break lights. It’s unclear at this point if in fact the looky-loos are causing this slowdown,” said Medina.
Traffic on the freeway was clear in places, but there was a noticeable slowdown in the area right around the Mulholland Bridge.
“The slowdown is pretty intense, there shouldn’t be a slowdown on this part of the 405,” Medina reported once he arrived at the partially-demolished bridge.
The South portion of the bridge was demolished in phase one of a mutli-millon dollar project to rebuild the overpass. The unintended consequence has been onlookers slowing down to gawk at what's left of the bridge.
Medina headed south first, but when he headed north, things were just as bad.
“You can already sense the slowdown right now. The traffic is slowing down, you can see, and the brake lights are just about everywhere.”
Traffic was heavy in both directions of the 405.
Drivers have taken to Twitter to complain about the long delays.
“405 backed up to 118 and 101 backed up to Calabasas Pkwy. It’s a BRIDGE people. No need to slow down to 20 miles an hour to admire it,” Jim Romanovich tweeted.
Caltrans spokeswoman Judy Gish advised drivers to just keep moving.
“If it’s not something that directly involves you as a driver, you probably shouldn’t be slowing down to take a look."
