On the other hand, the city I'm from originally is finally getting to widening one of the core freeways in an area that's seen a ton of growth over the past twenty years, and it sounds like just as much a pain for the people living there as the 405 construction has been in LA. There's just a far lower total of affected people since the city is so much less populated. :)
Even the medium sized midwestern city I am from has problems with road widening. I think it's basically a scourge wherever it goes on. There are some freeways in LA that almost seem impossible to shut down under any non-catastrophic circumstances, such as the 5 downtown (or anything downtown, probably) so it'll be interesting to see how they approach that over time.