710 Freeway Link Must Be Completed

This is in response to Joan Q. Hazlitt, Pasadena, on the connection of the 210/710/110 freeways (Times, Letters, Oct. 20).

She says that when she moved to Pasadena 20 years ago we looked forward to the completion of the 210/134 freeway connection. Then, the 710 Freeway was in the process of delay, mostly by the city of South Pasadena, for 10 years.

This 210/710/110 connection is a major part of the overall system that was designed over 50 years ago. It is, by no means, the “extension” of the 710 as the city of South Pasadena would have us believe. It is the missing link that must be completed.

Hazlitt likes the 110 Freeway because it lets the Pasadena residents go to downtown Los Angeles. This kind of provincial attitude makes for one of the worst bottlenecks in this county. I invite her to drive from the 710 Freeway and Valley Boulevard in Alhambra to about Fair Oaks and Del Mar in Pasadena, any hour of the day, for about 90 days.

She complains that freeways take away the tax base, and in her next sentence complains of housing development along the freeway. The closing paragraph refers to growth and growth management: “I just don’t think we owe the rest of the world a racetrack to come through our city. . . .”

Pasadena and South Pasadena have had an advantage over the rest of the county for about 10 years, from 1940 to 1950, when the first postwar freeways were being built. Who does she think paid for the Pasadena Freeway in the first place? A thought about racetracks: When it first opened in 1940, the Pasadena Freeway was called the Arroyo Seco Speedway.

LAWRENCE BERG

San Gabriel