If you're looking for some good news, turn your sights toward Highway 23.

Not only is the $65 million road-widening work, which is all but complete, nearly 14 months ahead of schedule and on budget, but the new lanes on this well-traveled pavement have also delivered the promised relief from bumper-to-bumper traffic during rush hour.

For the most part, it is now smooth sailing for the steady stream of cars and trucks — estimated at more than 99,000 daily — flowing along the busy 7-mile stretch of the east county highway.

As a bonus, the added road space has now lured back hundreds of motorists who had been clogging surface streets, such as Erbes, Lynn and Moorpark roads, in an effort to avoid the once-jammed highway.

Certainly, a job well-done by the California Department of Transportation.

So, there were smiles all around Thursday as officials from Caltrans and the cities of Moorpark, Simi Valley and Thousand Oaks gathered for a small ceremony to mark the achievement.

"Fourteen months ahead of schedule is unprecedented with these types of projects," Thousand Oaks Mayor Jacqui Irwin said.

Begun in April 2004, the project has added a lane in each direction between Los Angeles Avenue in Moorpark and Highway 101 in Thousand Oaks. Last month, Caltrans opened the final portion of the third southbound lane.

All that remains is some guardrail and shoulder work, landscaping and construction of an electronic message sign near Olsen Road that will be used for weather advisories, traffic-safety reminders and Amber alerts.

Planned for a decade, the project was derailed by state funding problems and escalating construction costs, especially for steel and concrete. It finally got under way with the help of Proposition 42 transportation funds.

There are those, The Star among them, who understand the need to repair our aging infrastructure, while at the same time investing in alternative transportation modes to lessen our dependency on the car. But, we, as a county and state, are not there yet in terms of mass transit.

In the meantime, by making our highways more efficient, we are saving gasoline, speeding up the movement of goods and reducing time lost by workers.