A Gap That, Sadly, Must Be Filled

It has been 25 years since construction of Interstate 710, the Long Beach Freeway, was halted due to opposition in South Pasadena. The result is a six-mile gap in a heavily-traveled corridor that other cities in the San Gabriel Valley want eliminated. Completing the freeway will have a sadly disruptive effect on South Pasadena, but it must be finished.

The California Department of Transporation is currently preparing the latest version of an environmental impact report that it must provide to the Federal Highway Administration in order to get money to complete the freeway. Currently the freeway ends at the San Bernardino Freeway and Valley Boulevard, on the Los Angeles-Alhambra border. If completed, it will reach the interchange of Interstate 210 and State Highway 134 in Pasadena. The cost of closing this freeway gap is estimated at between $500 million and $1 billion, depending on whether one talks to its proponents or critics.

This is the fourth environmental report that Caltrans has prepared on the freeway gap. Among other issues, it deals with the objections of preservationists who oppose the freeway because it will eliminate historic districts. The original route would have destroyed more than 100 historic homes. Caltrans has realigned the freeway to eliminate only 52 such homes, a more manageable number should their owners decide to move them.

One benefit to the long delay in completing the freeway is that engineers have learned more about how to mitigate the effects of highway projects in the meantime. In planning to complete the freeway, Caltrans has tried to take into account the fears of South Pasadena residents, who worry about losing the small-town ambience of their city. So the roadway will be submerged below ground-level, and a tunnel will be bored at one point to avoid disrupting activities at South Pasadena High School. Automobiles will be alloted only three lanes in each direction, with one of the three reserved for vans and carpools. The remainder of the roadway will be devoted to mass transit, including a busway to link up with the existing busway on the San Bernardino Freeway.

Opponents claim that closing the freeway gap may actually exacerbate traffic problems by generating new traffic, but they are not persuasive. New highways may generate more traffic in still-developing areas, but there is not much room for new growth around the freeway gap. In fact, an analysis by the Southern California Assn. of Governments suggests that closing the gap will simply relieve congestion that already exists, primarily on the surface streets where traffic from the unfinished freeway currently winds up. And cars moving along a highway generate less air pollution than they do in stop-and-go traffic. Closing the freeway gap could also reduce some truck traffic on Interstate 5, and relieve congestion on freeways as far away as Glendale and Whittier.

Clearly the heady era of unhindered freeway construction is over, and this region must look to other solutions for its transportation problems, particularly mass transit. But even mass transit must follow the configuration of existing highways, because they determine where people live and work. The inclusion of mass transit in plans for the Long Beach Freeway gap is evidence that the highway’s final leg is not just a convenience for a few drivers, but part of a regional transportation system that extends far beyond South Pasadena. If that system is to operate at peak efficiency, the gap must be closed.