Minority Residents Join to Oppose Freeway

A group of minority residents of Alhambra banded together Tuesday to oppose resurrecting long-delayed plans to extend the 710 freeway through their city and into Pasadena.

Last month the Alhambra City Council filed a lawsuit against Transportation Secretary Federico Pena to revive the 710 construction, which was essentially halted by legal actions filed by South Pasadena over the past 20 years. Although the claim did not mention race, city officials in press releases pointed out that their blue-collar populace is primarily people of color.

On Tuesday, Alhambra residents complained that they found out about their city’s lawsuit by reading about it in newspapers and that the council never sought their input.

Resident Louise Woo said the council wasn’t representing her views or those of many other minority residents. “The Alhambra City Council does not speak for a significant number of residents who do not support the 710.”

How many of those residents exist was a question raised by Alhambra Mayor Paul Talbot, who pointed out that only a handful of Alhambra residents showed up at Tuesday’s press conference.

Indeed, many who did attend were actually residents of Pasadena and South Pasadena.

“This was a South Pasadena group with a few Alhambra residents,” said Talbot. “We could do the same thing in their community.”

Alhambra’s lawsuit alleges that by not completing the 710, federal officials were causing thousands of cars and trucks to cut through the city en route to Pasadena, spewing exhaust and raising the rate of traffic fatalities by as much as six a year.

But Woo said Alhambra could alleviate its traffic woes by widening existing surface streets, which, in contrast to surrounding cities such as Monterey Park, have not been expanded since Alhambra’s boom in the 1980s.

Woo said freeway construction harms minority and white communities alike, pointing to the Century Freeway--which stretches from Norwalk through Watts and South-Central Los Angeles. “It does horrendous damage to neighborhoods,” she said.

South Pasadena City Councilman Paul Zee--the only ethnic minority on the city councils of the two clashing cities--pointed out that his city is one-third minority and declared: “This is really not a racial issue. This is a transportation issue.”

Talbot replied: “The only community that was able to stop this entire process was the affluent Caucasian community.”