Neighbors of Freeway Seek Wall

After robbing an Alhambra supermarket some years ago, the suspect dashed past Francine Ryan’s apartment building near the freeway, clambered over a chain-link fence and escaped in a getaway car down the freeway.

On other occasions, motorists who ran out of gas on the San Bernardino Freeway would scale the fence, knock on doors at the Royal Gardens Apartments and ask to use the telephone.

“I have kids in the house,” resident Christine Olguin said. “I can’t open the door to just anybody.”

Olguin, Ryan and a dozen neighbors at the West Ramona Road apartment complex confronted transportation officials recently, demanding that the state install eight-foot walls between their buildings and the freeway, which is less than 50 yards away.

Residents say such a wall would reduce traffic noise as well as protect the neighborhood from unwanted visitors and cars that may careen off the freeway.

“There is no denying that it’s noisy,” said Oscar C. Villacorte, a senior engineer for the state Department of Transportation. But, he said, the residents do not qualify for a sound wall because their building was erected after the freeway.

To qualify for a wall, the residents would have to get their state legislators to change the law, Villacorte said.

Even if they can do that, they may still have a long wait, Villacorte said. More than 200 communities statewide already are on the waiting list for the walls.

Michael Rotstan, a resident leading the fight for a wall, said he and his neighbors deserve to be at the top of the waiting list because, in addition to noise pollution, they face safety problems.

“Children climb over the fence,” Rotstan said. “Cars almost careen through the fence.”

Most residents have at least two young children, Ryan said. It is impossible for parents to always keep an eye on them, especially since there are no locks on the building gates, she said.

Rotstan, who lived at the Los Angeles County-subsidized complex in the early 1980s and recently moved back, said he knew about the noise problem but, as with many of his neighbors, could not afford to live elsewhere. Residents pay rent on a sliding scale, according to income.

“We do not have a choice,” said Elizabeth Mejia, a 24-year-old mother of two toddlers. “Our choice is to move here or be homeless.”

Although the buildings were designed so that no windows face the freeway, the rumbling of passing trucks--and trains on tracks between the east and westbound lanes--often shake the buildings, Mejia said.

Michael Duffy, an assistant to state Sen. Joseph Montoya (D-El Monte), said the senator has asked Caltrans for a report on the risks to residents’ safety.