Long Beach Freeway Extension Battle

So many of the people advocating completion of the Long Beach Freeway (710) talk only about the increasing traffic on our surface streets between the two stubs of the freeway. They seem to think only of the passenger commuter cars.

It should be remembered that this freeway is proposed as a major truck route, designed to provide a through route for cargo truck traffic from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach into the northern and eastern areas of the county.

They accuse South Pasadena residents of being obstinate obstructionists who are standing alone in blocking the freeway extension.

They should know a couple of other things: In addition to fighting to save our town, which we believe is a community worth fighting to save, we have proposed a number of alternative transportation features that we believe will solve our traffic problems not only for today, but into the future.

And we are not alone in this position. More and more people and organizations in Pasadena and Los Angeles, as well as numerous state, regional and national organizations concerned with the environment, cultural preservation, and economic issues, have joined us in opposing the freeway.

People in Pasadena, seeing that the Foothill Freeway (210) has not solved their traffic problems, now recognize that freeways are no longer the answer.

We in South Pasadena are not suffering from the NIMBY syndrome--not in my back yard--as some have charged. We recognize that freeways are obsolete, a system that seemed to fill our transportation needs decades ago, but no longer. We don’t want any more freeways anywhere, in anybody’s back yard. And that is what we are fighting for.

MICHAEL BURCH

South Pasadena