Over at Steve Coll's excellent new Fox & Hounds blogsite, local journo Joe Mathews implores Obama to use the power of the federal purse to intervene in one of Southern California's longest-running regional turf wars: The 710 Freeway extension through the legendarily "endangered" city of South Pasadena:
For a half-century, the 710 has been unfinished. It was supposed to go all the way from the Port of Long Beach up to Pasadena, where it would connect to the 210 Freeway, allowing drivers and truckers to skirt downtown LA on their way northwest (to the San Fernando Valley, Santa Clarita, the Antelope Valley or even the Central Valley). But the highway stops 6 miles short of the 210 in Pasadena, dumping drivers onto the surface streets of Alhambra. Why? The power of one very well organized special interest: the residents and city fathers of South Pasadena.For decades, South Pasadena has blocked this last bit of the interstate highway system with legal and other appeals. South Pasadenans know that the freeway would go through the center of their town, making it a much louder, less pleasant place. Of course, their actions have made other cities in the region louder, less pleasant places. The people of nearby Alhambra and Pasadena (disclosure: Pasadena's my hometown) have made clear they want the freeway to no avail.
This is a classic case of the needs of the few frustrating the needs of the many. The 710 is the main transportation artery out of America's largest port, the Port of Long Beach. It'd be a big boost for commerce if the freeway didn't abruptly end before its destination. Truckers are instead forced onto other freeways, clogging traffic---and slowing the business and personal lives of others. And with the country requiring an economic boost, there's no better time than right now to get construction started. This isn't a bridge to nowhere---it's a vital transportation link in the middle of a metropolitan area. And you want to talk shovel-ready? The 710 has been waiting for shovels to finish it for 50 years.
I'm no expert on urban planning, but speaking as a guy who's lived close to half a century in and around the city of LA, I'm not so sure how shovel-ready a 710 extension is anymore. Perhaps 50 years ago, when the hollow-and-hill country of the old Castilla land grant west of Alhambra was more sparsely populated than it is now. This isn't like the 210 extension from San Dimas to Rancho Cucamonga, built 10 years ago as a straight-line road-level shot along mostly undeveloped frontage. To get from Alhambra to Pasadena these days, you will almost have to either elevate or sink the roadbed, which only escalates your already foreboding construction costs; to simply build an eight-lane Interstate extension, you are looking at construction costs of upwards of a billion dollars per mile, and that's without factoring in your related public domain seizures and reimbursements. Which, it might be added, only figure to get even more costly once you proceed north of the 110 along the last mile and a half of the route, where the proposed 710 extension would slice through one of the priciest neighborhoods on Pasadena's (extremely) affluent south side before reaching the Del Mar connector.
Now, there's also a Caltrans study underway (it kicked off last summer) to test the feasibility of digging a 710 tunnel extension beneath South Pasadena instead, but again, this is going to be extremely costly given the total mileage involved, $10 billion or more for what at this point amounts to a six-mile connecting road.Now Joe Mathews makes some good points, particularly regarding the stubbornness (bordering on snobbishness) of South Pasadena's resident community. And he's also right to say, at this point in time, that this project will never be completed (if it ever is) without federal impetus behind it. There simply isn't any money in Sacramento to kick-start this project, most likely ever. However, I think he understates the effect a 710 extension would have on South Pasadena, at least as it has been typically proposed; whether elevated or sunken, an eight-lane highway through the heart of South Paz would basically trash the community, the locals know it, and that's why they've fought against it, hammer and tong, for over four decades.
Joe Mathews' argument is in the end an egalitarian one, and taken in that light, it can't be easily dismissed. But the essay begs a larger question: Should we be asking the federal government to spend money on transit projects that make it more convenient for us to get from Points A and B to C and D in our cars, or should government spend that same money on public works projects that will encourage more of us to get out of our cars, and into alternative modes of transportation such as light rail and buses, with the aim of (a) relieving urban Interstates corridors of surplus commuter traffic to expedite the flow of commercial traffic, and (b) creating transit hubs around which higher-density, pedestrian-friendly communities can develop? You know, like, walkable neighborhoods with character and street life, and local businesses and shops? Neighborhoods like, well, South Pasadena, come to think of it.
---Vitelius
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