710 FREEWAY EXTENSION: PRO and CON : In Alhambra, Fighting Traffic and Smog : South Pasadenans have managed to obstruct the final link for years, while neighbors suffer.

You have to give credit to the little old ladies of South Pasadena.

As a little old lady myself, I’ve watched them turn out in force for meetings of federal, state and local officials, time and again, to stymie completion of the Long Beach (710) Freeway. Most recently, they came out in droves for the California Transportation Commission’s final public hearing on the freeway. Their argument is that pushing the freeway through South Pasadena will destroy lovely houses, wreck quiet neighborhoods and divide their picturesque town.

While I admire their determination, I deplore the result. In stalling the freeway for 30 years, they have protected their own lifestyle but inflicted great damage on others, like mine. For me and my neighbors, political gridlock on the freeway issue has meant traffic gridlock on our streets. The damage that might be done to the quality of life in South Pasadena by closing the 6.2-mile gap in the freeway is minuscule compared with the damage that is done every day to residents, commuters and businesses in Alhambra, Pasadena and neighboring cities.

I have lived in my house for 44 years. I remember these terraced slopes when they were covered with orange groves. Today, Cal State LA, the Sheriff’s Department headquarters and large corporate offices nestle among the remaining trees and send heavy traffic past my driveway. While I might sometimes long for the unspoiled hills of decades ago, I recognize that these businesses and institutions educate and employ thousands of Angelenos, most of them working and middle-class people like me, many of them ethnic minorities.

Because of the missing freeway link in South Pasadena, traffic spills onto surface streets, stacking up at my door. Just sit for a moment at Valley Boulevard and Fremont Avenue in Alhambra during rush hour and watch the endless parade. Drivers wait for several minutes to turn, their idling engines spewing toxins, their horns honking. Children march off to school through dense traffic. Unless they take the precaution of backing their cars out and parking on the street at dawn, residents can be trapped in their driveways.

The damage to businesses must be severe. My neighbors and I find it easier to drive to Arcadia to shop than to reach many Alhambra stores. One market manager told me that his sales have fallen off just because there is too much through-traffic in front of his store.

With so much evidence of the need for the completion of the Long Beach Freeway, those against the project have been unable to kill it. They have, however, persuaded officials to order study after study and hearings on top of hearings. The process has generated enough paperwork to keep an army of lawyers and bureaucrats occupied for decades. The most recent example is the old soup of irrelevant, outmoded or already implemented “traffic management” contrivances that South Pasadena has hastily reheated in the guise of a “Low-Build/Multi-Modal Plan.” Just like its title, the plan is incoherent, promising far more than it delivers.

Outside of South Pasadena, everyone I know wants the freeway finished. But few have the time or the stomach to go to meeting after meeting. The folks in South Pasadena who are against the freeway are much more tenacious. There are 20 or so ladies who always show up early and sit in the front. One of them told me: “I don’t see why you are fighting so hard. You’re not going to be around when this is done.”

She may be right. I am 73, and my chances of ever driving Route 710 to the 210 Freeway are not great. But I want my son to be spared these problems. And it is wrong for one community to declare itself an island and shift its burdens elsewhere.

FREEWAY PLAN:

State transportation officials are considering completing the 710 Freeway between I-10 and I-210. The “Meridian Variation” roughly follows Meridian Avenue except for a 1.4-mile section between South Pasadena High School and Arlington Drive, where the route curves slightly to the west.