'Carmageddon II' fails to materialize

Workers demolish the south side of Mulholland overpass on the 405 freeway during last year's "Carmageddon." NEW: Interstate 405 should reopen at 5 a.m. Monday as planned, L.A. mayor says NEW: Hours before the reopening, he calls the highway shutdown a "success" A 10-mile section of Interstate 405 was closed for the weekend A portion of a bridge came down as workers were demolishing another part of it Los Angeles (CNN) -- Ten miles of the nation's busiest highway should reopen, on time, Monday morning after the latest phase in a massive project that led Southern California officials to dub it "Carmageddon II." Despite the closure of a large swath of Interstate 405, the nightmare traffic tie-ups that prompted that fittingly Hollywood-worthy name failed to materialize over the weekend. In fact, with a few hours of work still left to go before the roads were declared safe, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was already declaring the project a "resounding success." "Our hope and expectation was that it would be Carmaheaven 2," Villaraigosa said, noting that a weekend-long highway shutdown last year had proceeded without a hitch, despite dire forecasts. "That hope and expectation came to be realized." 'Carmageddon,' the sequel: So far, Los Angeles drivers staying home The 405, as it's locally called, connects suburban San Fernando Valley with Los Angeles International Airport. It also stretches into the well-to-do neighborhoods of west Los Angeles, such as Bel Air and Brentwood. The massive transportation project's main aim is to install what Villaraigosa said would be the "longest ... carpool lane in the nation" on the oft-packed highway. Authorities finished work early last summer, reopening lanes hours ahead of what they'd anticipated. That will not be the case this time around -- in part because "we had 30% more work to do," said the mayor -- though the interstate is on schedule to reopen at 5 a.m. Monday. "We are on track, thank you Los Angeles," Villaraigosa said late Sunday afternoon. The project did see an unscripted moment Saturday, however, when a section of the famed 50-year-old Mulholland Drive Bridge -- a fixture in the Los Angeles freeway-scape -- narrowly missing workers who were demolishing another part of it. iReport: Photos capture bridge collapse Crews had planned to take down part of the bridge to make room for a wider roadway. The bridge will be reconstructed. "On an operation of this size, of this magnitude, pieces come down of all different sizes and shapes," Dan Kulka of Kiewit Construction told CNN affiliate KABC. "We did not anticipate this, although it's not unusual for a big piece to come down like that." Self-driving cars now legal in California Governor signs law to make California home to nation's first truly high-speed rail CNN's Michael Martinez and Kyung Lah contributed to this report.