Entrepreneur Elon Musk has already spent $50,000 trying to make the 405 Freeway better – and he’s willing to pay even more. 
 
 Musk said he is open to pay the cost of adding workers to the widening project "as a contribution to the city and my own happiness. If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." 
 
 In July, the PayPal and Tesla Motors co-founder met David Murphy, a Westwood resident who heads Angelenos Against Gridlock, a group seeking to hasten the development and repair of infrastructure in California and nationwide. The two shared traffic frustrations, and Musk contributed $50,000 toward an effort to hurry the 405 project along. So far they have little to show for it. 
 
 Musk quips that it's easier getting rockets into orbit than navigating his commute between home in Bel-Air and his Space Exploration Technologies factory in Hawthorne. 
 
 DISCUSSION: Delays on the 405 widening 
 
 "The 405 … varies from bad to horrendous," he told the Los Angeles Times in an interview. "It just seems people in Los Angeles are being tortured by this.… I don't know why they aren't marching in the streets." 
 
 The massive project to widen the 405 Freeway is not only causing traffic nightmares for motorists like Musk but has also been plagued by cost overruns and delays. 
 
 Transportation officials say the project is now slated to take at least a year longer than first anticipated and cost about $100 million more than the originally budgeted $1 billion. 
 
 The companies handling the work won kudos when they were able to reopen the freeway ahead of schedule during the so-called Carmageddon events in 2011 and 2012. But that masked a larger problem for the main contractor, Kiewit, and the subcontractors. 
 
 Officials now aim to complete the bulk of the project by June 2014, with work on the problematic middle segment between Montana Avenue and Sunset Boulevard lasting perhaps until fall 2014, according to Michael Barbour, the veteran engineer overseeing the project for the L.A. County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. 
 
 The delays and cost overruns are raising the ire of residents and local officials, who say the project is causing major disruptions throughout the already traffic-clogged Westside. 
 
 "This project has been horribly managed," said Zev Yaroslavsky, Los Angeles County supervisor and board member of Metro, which is running the project. "The performance of contractors has left a lot to be desired.… They've shown a complete lack of sensitivity and empathy for the community in which they're doing the work." 
 
 Asked why he and other elected officials have not publicly prodded the contractor to enlist more workers and equipment to speed the project, Yaroslavsky said: "Where's the money going to come from? This project is over budget by a considerable amount, and Metro hasn't figured out how it's going to cover the cost overruns, let alone incur additional costs." 
 
 Several factors have driven the delays, including the structural failure of miles of new sound walls that had to be demolished and rebuilt, a legal wrangle over the placement of ramps near the Getty Center and the complex logistics of finding and relocating more than a dozen utility lines under Sepulveda Boulevard. 
 
 All the while, Kiewit was instructed to keep traffic moving on one of the nation's busiest highways. 
 
 Kiewit released a statement Wednesday defending its work. 
 
 "The costs and schedule impacts are the result of the project's overall complexity and the significant challenges associated with multiple unexpected utility and right-of-way issues," the firm said. "Kiewit and Metro are committed to working together to minimize future delays and resolve final costs. We ... are committed to delivering the highest-quality product on the I-405 project." 
 
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 martha.groves@latimes.com ||||| Billionaire Elon Musk says he really does plan to dig a tunnel to avoid LA traffic, and that he plans to start "digging next month." 
 
 Musk first announced his intentions in December, complaining that traffic in Los Angeles is out of control. 
 
 But that was then followed by some tweets that suggested he was joking. 
 
 Some have found it hard to believe that Musk, who already is pretty busy running Tesla (with its recent SolarCity acquisition), SpaceX, and the OpenAI project, is serious about boring through the earth beneath southern California to avoid traffic, but the entrepreneur has repeatedly stressed he is not merely trolling. 
 
 Musk said he plans to start digging "across from my desk at SpaceX. Crenshaw and the 105 Freeway, which is 5 mins from LAX." Crenshaw Boulevard is a major street in Los Angeles that runs past SpaceX headquarters and the adjacent Tesla Design Center. 
 
 As with any Musk project — self-driving cars, human colonies on Mars — questions remain over whether laws, or simple scientific realities, could stymie such a project. 
 
 A Musk spokesperson was not immediately available to comment. 
 
 It might not seem terribly wise digging underground in a city known for its earthquakes, but Los Angeles does have a underground rail system already — though it is far more limited in range than those in other major U.S. cities. 
 
 When Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer introduced a bill into the Senate in 2007 to allow for the expansion of Los Angeles' subway system, Feinstein said, "Experts have now assured us that tunneling technologies have improved sufficiently to allay" concerns over earthquake damage. 
 
 So Musk's tunnel may be possible.
– Surprise, surprise: Los Angeles again ranked as the city with the worst traffic congestion in America in an annual survey out this week, reports Reuters. Here's a sign of how bad things are, from the LA Times: Entrepreneur Elon Musk—he of Tesla, PayPal, and SpaceX—has forked over $50,000 of his own money to speed up a massive project to widen the 405 freeway, and he's willing to give more if it puts more workers on the job. It's "a contribution to the city and my own happiness," says the commuting CEO. "If it can actually make a difference, I would gladly contribute funds and ideas. I've super had it." The 405 project in particular is behind schedule and over budget, and drivers currently put up with conditions that range from "bad to horrendous," says Musk. "I don't know why they aren't marching in the streets."