Litigation, Confusion : Road Paved With Good Intentions

When construction began on the Century Freeway in the spring of 1982, hopes were high that this, the most expensive freeway ever built in the United States, would point the way toward a more enlightened era of urban road building.

Instead of ripping through neighborhoods of poor people, scattering inhabitants to the four winds, the Century would be built with care and with a conscience. It would be a freeway “that has a heart,” said federal Judge Harry Pregerson, who has presided over litigation involving the project since 1972.

There would be a freeway, to be sure--six lanes for regular traffic and two for buses and car pools, running 17.3 miles between Norwalk and the eastern edge of Los Angeles International Airport.

Light-Rail Line

But there would also be a light-rail line, built in the freeway median, and about 3,700 low-cost apartments and town houses, to replace housing that was razed to make way for the freeway.

All this was to be built with maximum participation by racial minorities and women and by residents of the low-income communities that lie along the freeway route, including Compton, Lynwood, Watts and Willowbrook.

These details were spelled out in a 1981 federal court consent decree that ended a decade of litigation and was signed by the California Department of Transportation, which would build the project; the Federal Highway Administration, which would provide 92% of the money, and the Center for Law inthe Public Interest, representing a coalition of plaintiffs who had sued to block the freeway in 1972.

But as the project approaches the halfway point, problems have appeared on several fronts:

- Freeway construction is on schedule but the cost is very high.

- The housing program is in shambles. Construction costs for the new apartments and town houses are averaging well over $100,000 per unit. Vacancy rates are high. Some of the sites are poor and some of the construction is shoddy. Charges of fraud and corruption are now under federal and state investigation.

- Minority employment goals generally have been met (though female hiring goals have not), but the attempt to provide work for small minority or female-owned contractors has largely failed. A high percentage of these firms has gone broke or dropped out of the program.

The economic boom the “corridor cities” were expecting has not materialized.

There are many reasons for each of these problems, but one underlying cause is the lack of an effective mechanism to enforce the agreement. A great believer in consensus, Judge Pregerson has counted on the competence and good will of the agencies--Caltrans, the Federal Highway Administration and the state Department of Housing and Community Development, which runs the housing program--to carry out the work. Sometimes the judge’s confidence has been misplaced.

Caltrans, thriving in this laissez-faire environment, has completed $100 million worth of freeway projects, has another $300 million under construction and expects to open the roadway, on schedule, in the fall of 1993.

“We know how to design freeways--we can put ‘em out the door,” said David H. Roper, who runs the Century project as a deputy director in Caltrans’ Los Angeles office.

Imaginative Aspects Languish

But the imaginative, non-highway aspects of the court order, especially the affordable housing and affirmative-action plans, have languished because there has been no super-bureaucracy like Caltrans to promote them and no outside force to make sure that they happen.

The Century is a huge, complicated project, and the cost is enormous--about $2.5 billion, including $1.2 billion to build the freeway, $500 million for right-of-way acquisition, $300 million or more for the housing units and $400 million to $450 million for the light-rail line.

The federal government, through the Federal Highway Administration, is providing 92% of the freeway and housing funds, while most of the money to build the transit line will come from the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission, using revenue from the half-cent sales tax increase approved by county voters in 1980.

Even when housing and light-rail costs are subtracted, the freeway itself will be the most expensive ever built, costing about $100 million per mile.

More than $300 million was spent before the first shovel of dirt was turned--on 25 years of planning, right-of-way purchasing, nine years of litigation and the extensive environmental studies that resulted from the lawsuit.

Soaring construction costs have added to the total. When the first Los Angeles-area freeway, the Pasadena, was built in the early 1940s, the cost was about $1 million per mile. Sound walls alone on the Century

Freeway are costing about $500,000 per mile.

The Century will intersect four other major freeways--the San Diego, Harbor, Long Beach and San Gabriel River--all of which must be kept operative during construction. The interchange with the San Diego Freeway will cost about $250 million, the five-level Harbor Freeway interchange $200 million.

G. L. (Jerry) Russell, Caltrans construction chief in Sacramento, said “massive utility relocations,” especially near Los Angeles International Airport, have added significantly to the cost.

Escalating Costs

Cleaning up the Willco Dump’s toxic waste deposits, beneath what will be the interchange between the Century and Long Beach freeways, was supposed to cost $3 million to $4 million but escalated to $27 million, as fleets of trucks carried contaminated material from Lynwood to Kettleman City, 250 miles away.

“There were just a whole lot of things over and above what was expected,” Russell said.

Major highway contractors say the requirement that about 35% of the freeway construction dollars must go to minority or female-owned subcontractors has added greatly to the Century’s cost.

These prime contractors say there are not enough qualified minority and female firms, and they have been forced to hire inexperienced, unqualified subcontractors who either fail part way through the job or whose work must be redone.

Knowing this will happen, major contractors say they are increasing their Century Freeway bids by 10% to 20% to cover their losses. That, in turn, increases the project’s cost.

But Caltrans insists that its own studies, repeated frequently, show no evidence that the minority and female contract requirements are adding significantly to Century Freeway costs.

By the year 2000, the freeway is expected to carry 150,000 vehicles a day west of the Long Beach Freeway and 177,000 east of it. This will ease congestion somewhat on two nearby east-west freeways, the Santa Monica and the Artesia, but Caltrans officials say the improvement will not last long.

Said Roper, “For every bit of relief we can put out there, there’s that amount of demand, just waiting.”

Problems on the freeway segment of this vast project pale when compared to the woes of the replenishment housing program.

The trouble began with the selection of the Department of Housing and Community Development, a small, unknown state agency, to run the program.

Center for Law in the Public Interest attorneys and their allies in the Administration of former Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. selected Housing and Community Development because they wanted a small, innovative agency to run the program, not the huge, highway-oriented Caltrans bureaucracy.

“It didn’t make sense to have Caltrans, which was mainly experienced in building freeways, trying to get into the housing business,” said John Phillips, a law center attorney who has been involved with the case for 15 years. “We wanted a housing advocate . . . an agency that was truly interested in the program and was motivated to get the maximum number of units for the money available.”

But Phillips and other supporters of the affordable housing plan have been disappointed by the results. The Inglewood-based Century Freeway Housing Program, run by the Department of Housing and Community Development, now has a staff of 85 and an annual budget of more than $6 million, but the results have been poor.

The average cost of building the 1,000 or so apartments and condominiums completed so far has been at least $110,000 per unit--a figure called “mind-boggling” and “unimaginable” by housing experts. Administrative costs alone were running $40,000 per unit, the inspector general for the U.S. Department of Transportation reported in 1985.

The rehabilitation of several hundred single-family homes, undertaken in the belief that this housing could be provided faster and cheaper than new construction, has turned out to be a slow and expensive process. The successful bidder on a recent contract to relocate and refurbish four of these units will be paid $125,000 per house.

Because costs are so high, the number of housing units to be built has been reduced from the 3,700 envisioned by the consent decree to about 3,400, and further reductions are possible.

Between 30% and 40% of the completed units stand empty. Some have been vacant for a year or more, due to long escrows, poor lending policies, inefficient rental procedures and other problems.

Locations selected for some of the 25 apartment or condominium projects completed so far have been poor and some construction has been sloppy.

At least a dozen projects have been stalled, and some have been abandoned, because local communities along the freeway route objected to what they perceived to be “public housing,” even though more than half of the occupants of Century Freeway housing are middle-income wage earners.

Finally, alleged wheeling and dealing among officials of the housing program and certain builders and developers have led to investigations that are now under way, both state and federal officials say.

Distressed by the housing failures, the Center for Law in the Public Interest has moved to restructure the program, hoping to take it away from the state and turn it over, instead, to a new public-private partnership, or quasi-public corporation, to build the remaining units.

This would please Federal Highway Administrator Ray Barnhart, who has been unhappy about federal participation in the housing program since the decree was signed in 1981.

In a recent Washington interview, Barnhart said: “I would like to extricate us totally from direct involvement in this and say to the state, ‘Here, this is your mess, clean it up.’ ”

However, the Department of Housing and Community Development disagrees with the law center’s proposal, contending that it would result in construction of fewer housing units at higher cost. Judge Pregerson may have to decide the matter.

The ambitious affirmative-action goals contained in the decree have been only partly achieved.

Minority hiring targets have been met--more than half of the freeway workers and more than 70% of those building the housing are members of racial minorities--but female hiring has fallen far short of the goals.

A recent study found that only 1.3% of highway and housing jobs have gone to women, although Caltrans, under prodding from the court, has set a 10% goal.

The consent decree also sought to provide work for female and minority contractors.

85 Separate Contracts

Freeway construction was divided into 85 separate contracts, to make it easier for such firms to get the jobs. But to date, all of the contracts have gone to well-established highway construction companies run by Anglo males.

In line with goals set under the consent decree, prime contractors must subcontract about 35% of the work to minority or female firms, a requirement that has enabled a handful of these companies to thrive. But many small subcontractors, inexperienced and under-financed, have gone broke on the Century Freeway.

The affirmative-action goals also have led to the creation of many “fronts”--subcontracting firms that are supposedly run by minorities or women but actually are under the control of Anglo or male prime contractors.

On the housing side, some minority and female builders and developers have obtained Century contracts and, in turn, have assigned about half of the subcontract dollars to disadvantaged firms.

However, the subcontractors complain that many minority or female prime contractors, like their Anglo, male counterparts, are slow to pay and quick to replace the subcontractor if something goes wrong.

The Century Freeway Affirmative Action Committee, established by the court to monitor those parts of the decree, has been floundering for more than a year, unable to provide the staff to check on Caltrans or the Department of Housing and Community Development.

Limited Agency Budget

Another agency established by the consent decree, the Century Freeway Technical Assistance Project, has helped some small minority and female firms to function effectively as subcontractors, but the agency’s budget is limited and its advice is often ignored.

A special program that was designed to provide bonds and loan guarantees for small minority and female contractors has been moribund, approving only a handful of bonding packages since it was established in 1985.

The Corridor Advocate, an office that was established to help people who were displaced by freeway construction, has been steadily reduced in size and budget. It probably will disappear altogether in the next year.

Perhaps the most successful of these special efforts to help minorities and women is a pre-apprenticeship training program that has fed more than 850 workers (but only 105 women) into construction and building trades unions that are doing Century Freeway work.

Taken as a whole, the affirmative-action efforts have been better than nothing but have fallen far short of the high hopes contained in the consent decree.

Uncertain Benefits

Nobody knows how much benefit Century Freeway construction has brought to Compton, Lynwood, Watts, Willowbrook and other low-income communities along the route.

Neither Caltrans nor the housing agency keeps track. The Century Freeway Affirmative Action Committee should know but, until recently, has lacked the technical competence to get the information.

Clearly, there have been some gains. A certain number of corridor residents have obtained jobs on the freeway or in the housing program. Some corridor businesses have benefited. A few neighborhoods have been enhanced by the housing projects.

Just as clearly, the hope that the Century project would lift an entire area from the economic doldrums has been dashed.

Building in some of these low-income, high-crime neighborhoods has posed special problems. Although the route no longer is the gathering place for the rapists, drug addicts, rats and packs of wild dogs that it became when construction was stalled by a long legal battle in the 1970s, dumping and vandalism are still problems.

$1 Million to Remove Debris

Debris removal costs about $1 million a year, according to the county Agricultural Department, which does the work under contract to Caltrans.

“People dumping junk smash their trucks through our fences and gates almost every day,” said Harry McGovern, general manager of MCM Construction Co., which is building $75 million worth of Century Freeway bridges and viaducts. “We’ve had one fence cut 10 times. There’s no way to keep ‘em out.”

The Century’s greatest success may turn out to be the part that has not been built yet--the light-rail line.

The 1981 consent decree called for bus- and car-pool lanes in the freeway median, but Caltrans officials soon decided that a light-rail line would be more cost-effective. This was a belated victory for former Caltrans Director Adriana Gianturco, who had long argued that a rail line made more sense than a freeway in the Century corridor.

Attorneys at the Center for Law in the Public Interest agreed with Gianturco and are delighted that the line is taking shape.

‘Real Transportation Corridor’

The rail line “makes this a real transportation corridor, not just a highway,” said Paul Taylor, deputy director of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission. “You don’t need a car to use it.”

The line will run for 16.5 miles in the 82-foot median, then dip south for three miles to carry workers to the heavy aerospace employment area in and around El Segundo.

Taylor said ridership is expected to top 100,000 a day by the year 2000.

One unresolved question is whether or not the light rail line will extend to Los Angeles International Airport. According to present plans, it will not. The westernmost station will be at Aviation Boulevard, where riders would board shuttle buses for the airline terminals.

This means that a passenger bound for the airport from downtown Los Angeles would have to transfer twice--first, from either the Long Beach light-rail line or the Harbor busway (a second deck on the Harbor Freeway, also scheduled to open in 1993) to the Century rail line and then again to the airport shuttle bus.

‘Fewest Impediments’

Under those conditions, “very few people will use the service,” said Clifton A. Moore, executive director of the city’s Department of Airports. “The systems that work well have the fewest impediments.”

Since the federal government already has agreed to finance a study of the possible widening of the Sepulveda Boulevard tunnel, to accommodate the extra airport-bound vehicle traffic that the Century Freeway will generate, Moore suggested that the study should also include the possibility of running the light-rail line through the tunnel to the airport’s edge.

At first, county Transportation Commission officials rejected Moore’s suggestion as impractical and too expensive but now have changed their minds, Taylor said, and will participate in the study.

In general, as this colossal project nears the halfway mark, its most traditional component, the freeway itself, is on schedule and the light-rail line looks promising, but innovative features such as the affirmative-action policies and the affordable housing program are not living up to expectations.

Political Climates Changed

Why has this happened? For one thing, the political climate has changed.

“In order to understand the Century Freeway, you have to understand the temper of the 1970s,” said C. Kenneth Orski, a Washington transportation consultant who was an official of the Urban Mass Transportation Administration during the Carter presidency.

“Transportation programs were part of a very broad consideration of urban social problems,” Orski added. “Highway programs were supposed to deal with social impacts.”

But the project is being built in the 1980s, when some of these social concerns have faded away.

When the Deukmejian Administration took office in 1983, Caltrans adopted a much harder line on housing and affirmative-action issues, according to Phillips of the Center for Law in the Public Interest.

‘Nothing Got Resolved’

“Caltrans has been battling us tooth and nail,” he said. “There clearly was a new strategy. We would suggest things and Caltrans would simply say, ‘No.’ Judge Pregerson told us to hold monthly coordination meetings to resolve some of the problems, but nothing got resolved because all they said was, ‘No, no, no.’ It seemed to be a calculated strategy to wear us out.”

But Orrin Finch, who handled the Century Freeway case as a Caltrans lawyer and now works for the conservatively oriented Pacific Legal Foundation in Sacramento, said Phillips was to blame for the bad feelings.

“The first time I went to one of those coordination meetings, it was clear they were going to be run the way John Phillips wanted them run and that meant they were very confrontational,” Finch said. “Phillips thought he had won the case and he was going to rule the roost. . . . He let us know he was going to nip at our heels every chance he got.”

Running Battles

Whoever was to blame, there followed about two years of running battles between Caltrans and the law center, mainly over housing and affirmative-action issues.

Pregerson had to resolve many of these disputes, and this is not a role that the judge appears to relish.

Pregerson likes to solve problems through consensus and good personal relationships.

“In dealing with a project like the Century Freeway, some of the problems are legal and some are technical, but the main problems you’re really confronting are human issues,” he said. “Much depends on how the entities and the people representing them--all aggressive, talented people--interact with each other.”

Pregerson, who first handled the Century Freeway litigation as a federal district judge but retained the case when he moved to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in 1979, outlined his views on the case during an interview in his Pasadena chambers.

Not an Ordinary Case

“This is not the ordinary, run-of-the-mill case,” the 64-year-old jurist said. “This is not a case where one side wins and the other side loses. You don’t have that here. It’s an ongoing relationship, in which everybody wins if the project is completed according to the provisions of the consent decree.

“Under the decree, I’m the final arbiter of any disputes that arise among the parties. I have broad powers. But it’s been my approach to try to get the parties to work together to resolve their differences,” he added. “The case started in 1972 and it won’t end until 1993 (when the freeway is scheduled to open). It’s important that everyone work together harmoniously, to achieve common goals. Maybe I sound like an idealist, but I hope that will happen.”

Pregerson schedules formal “status conferences” four times a year and sometimes presides over informal “soul-baring sessions” when problems seem intractable. At these meetings he often urges one irate lawyer or another to “cool down a bit” or to “read Dale Carnegie” (author of “How to Win Friends and Influence People”).

‘Hot Tub Approach’

The lawyers refer to this as Pregerson’s “hot tub approach” and Caltrans attorney Ralph Livingstone said he thinks that it works.

The judge’s “informal approach, outside the courtroom . . . has been quite effective in mediating problems among these various entities,” Livingstone said.

But Phillips said Pregerson’s reluctance to order Caltrans to alter its policies has enabled the transportation agency to concentrate on building the freeway, while paying scant attention to affirmative-action and housing problems.

“The status quo favors Caltrans and, really, only the judge can change the status quo,” he said.

Phillips believes that only a court-appointed “master,” or court-appointed experts, could ensure compliance with the consent decree. Last month, the law center asked Pregerson to appoint outside management consultants to review the project, with an eye to the possible later appointment of a master or monitors.

‘Need Expert Advice’

“We’re only halfway through,” Phillips said. “We’ve got another six or seven years to go. We can solve some of these problems but we need expert advice on how to do it.”

Russell, the Caltrans construction chief, said the agency would oppose such a move.

“Caltrans is the responsible party,” he said. “We are responsible to the public for construction of the state highway system. A third party cannot assume our statutory role.”

In the past, Pregerson has been skeptical about appointing outside experts, believing that they might do more harm than good.

“It’s a neat idea to reach out and grab an expert to solve a problem,” he said in an interview. “But where do you find the expert? . . . Who can spot the problems and make appropriate suggestions? If you impose (experts) on one of the parties and that party comes to feel it is the focus of some audit or investigation, then there is a natural tendency for them to circle the wagons.”

‘Shuttle Diplomacy’

A year ago the judge asked Murray Brown, a Cal State Los Angeles political scientist, to carry out what the judge described as “quiet shuttle diplomacy” to solve disputes, but that is as close as he has come to appointing outside experts.

Brown is paid $35,000 a year for his efforts but none of the lawyers in the case could think of an important problem he has solved.

Pregerson appeared to be shaken when a parade of minority and female subcontractors appeared in his courtroom last month to complain about the treatment they were receiving from Caltrans, the housing agency and from prime contractors.

After hearing their complaints, the judge asked law center attorneys to bring in a motion that could lead to the appointment of an outside management review team.

Many believe that such a review, and the subsequent appointment of outside experts to run the program, are vital if the lofty goals of the Century Freeway project are to be realized.

CENTURY FREEWAY PROJECT Planning begins-- mid-1950s.

Litigation begins--1972

Final court settlement--1981

Construction begins--Spring, 1982

Housing construction begins--1983

Freeway construction ends--1993

Housing construction ends--1993

The Costs Estimated Total--$2.5 billion

--$1.2 billion for the freeway

--$500 million for right-of-way acquisition

--$300 million or more for housing units

--$400-$450 million for the light-rail line

The Federal Highway Administration is paying 92% of the freeway and housing; most money for the rail line will come from the Los Angeles County Transporta tion Commission.

The freeway will be the most expensive

ever built, costing about $100 million per mile. The Pasadena Freeway cost about $1 million per mile; soundwalls alone on the Century will cost $500,000 per mile.

Interchange with the San Diego Freeway will cost about $250 million; the five-level Harbor Freeway interchange, $200 million.

The Rail Line The line will run for 16.5 miles in the 82-foot median, then dip south for three miles to carry workers in and around El Segundo. There may be a “coastal line,” running north to Marina del Rey. Unresolved is whether or not the light rail line will extend to Los Angeles International Airport. According to present plans, it will not.

Ridership is estimated at 104,000 a day by the year 2000.

There will be 10 open-platform stations, each with an adjacent park-and-ride lot.

Trains will operate 5 a.m. to 1 a.m. daily.

During peak hours there will be three-car trains every six minutes; during off-peak every 12 minutes; night hours-- one-car train every 20 minutes.

Major rail construction will begin in 1989.