Debate Rages Over Plan to Link Freeways : Traffic: Caltrans asks for opinions on the proposed extension of the Foothill Freeway. It gets an earful.

Running her finger across a huge map of a proposed freeway path, a Claremont woman said she was plenty upset because the $800-million roadway looked as if it was going to slice through her swimming pool.

“Phoenix looks better every day,” she said as she left a packed Claremont auditorium.

Connie Belisle had a problem too. Belisle told 450 people in the auditorium Wednesday that the state highway might cut off her back-yard view of Mt. Baldy.

Yet Richard L. Meyer, district manager of the Automobile Club of Southern California’s Upland/Ontario office, cited widespread support for the roadway among local government, business and transportation agencies and told the audience that the freeway “will complete a vital link between Foothill Boulevard and Interstate 215.”

From La Verne to Claremont to Rialto to Rancho Cucamonga, the proposed 28.2-mile extension of the Route 30 freeway has been the talk of the towns.

Over the last two weeks, more than 1,200 people have come to praise, criticize and puzzle over the freeway plans presented at a series of five meetings held by the California Department of Transportation in communities of the eastern San Gabriel Valley and San Bernardino County.

Under the most favorable conditions, planners say, it will take another year before the design is complete and another decade before the roadway could be built, extending the Foothill Freeway east from La Verne to San Bernardino.

Now, Caltrans officials say, is the time for the public to speak out so the plans--designed following a 1984 study--can be adjusted. The deadline for comments to Caltrans is Sept. 15.

No final decisions will be made until public concerns have been “carefully addressed,” said Ronald Kosinski, a Caltrans environmental planner based in Los Angeles.

Kosinski argued forcefully for the roadway. He told the Claremont audience that an eight-lane freeway, including lanes for high-occupancy vehicles, would ease congestion, particularly on local streets jammed with commuter traffic.

In addition, he said that the road would reduce accidents, cut down on air pollution by eliminating stop-and-go traffic in the region and improve driving times.

The population of San Bernardino County is booming, he said, and the freeway is necessary to accommodate that growth.

He acknowledged that there are trade-offs and that the project poses environmental concerns.

Some 229 residences and 23 businesses would have to be moved, affecting more than 50 historic properties.

Among those are the Craftsman-style Pitzer-Peairs house in Claremont and the Loma Alta residence of internationally known woodworker and furniture maker Sam Maloof. The proposed route cuts through Maloof’s lemon groves, but would not force the removal of his house and studio from the 5.1-acre site.

An estimated 208 acres of open space abundant with native plants would be lost if the freeway was built. Of special concern, Kosinski said, is the roadway’s effect on the Santa Ana River woolly star, Eriastrum densifolium.

Studies are under way to determine if a subspecies of the plant, found particularly in San Bernardino County’s Lytle Creek, is a federally protected endangered species.

Plants or no plants, though, some city officials say they are taking a pragmatic approach and trying to extract accommodations from Caltrans. Claremont Mayor Nicholas L. Presecan said, “No one is going to be able to stop this freeway.”

Next Tuesday, he said, the Claremont City Council is scheduled to review its list of concerns that will be officially presented to Caltrans.

La Verne Councilman Patrick J. Gatti said the city opposes current plans to make the freeway elevated through his community and hopes Caltrans will change the design to place it below ground level.

By far, most of those speaking at Wednesday’s meeting opposed the current plan and felt that public officials had not done enough to protect their communities’ interests.

George Keeler of Claremont said Caltrans has done nothing to coordinate the freeway proposal with a separate $14-million project aimed at widening a six-mile stretch of Baseline Road, which runs closely parallel to the proposed highway route.

Keeler, a member of the Community Assn. for Responsible Environment, said the two roadways next to each other “would double the noise, double the environmental problems and double the crime problems. We don’t see the need for both of them. We’re not against the freeway. But what we’re for is 21st-Century transportation planning, not 1950s-style freeways.”

That means, he said, more emphasis on commuter rail, light rail and high-occupancy vehicle lanes.

To cheers, Claremont’s Jean Post told the audience that freeways do not eliminate congestion but “create more traffic.”

And boos greeted remarks by an aide to state Sen. Bill Leonard (R-Big Bear) when she quoted her boss as saying, “The earliest possible completion . . . is essential to the continued and orderly growth of the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire.”

In an otherwise humorless meeting, Robert Grant, a Claremont resident who said he commutes via van pool to El Segundo, received a big laugh when he said he was surprised to read in a Caltrans booklet that the freeway would foster “uninterrupted flow of traffic.”

That, by definition, he said does not exist in Southern California.