Residents Battle New Pasadena Freeway Lane

Depending on the time of day, the southbound Pasadena Freeway through Elysian Park either slows to an excruciating dribble or lurches and merges in a chaotic slalom race to downtown.

The old stretch of freeway between the Los Angeles River and Chinatown has an accident rate three times the state average.

To relieve the congestion, Caltrans is moving on a $15 million plan to add a 4,000-foot stretch of lane and ease the transition with Interstate 5.

But residents in Solano Canyon, which cuts under the freeway, have filed a lawsuit against the state agency, alleging that it failed to conduct an environmental impact report and did not give the public adequate notice of the project. They, along with two powerful state legislators, say the project will fail to unclog the freeway, merely pushing the bottleneck a mile south.

Resistance to the extra-lane plan runs deep in this bit of Los Angeles, where the past has left a bitter distrust of outsiders’ intentions.

The narrow canyon neighborhood is a century-old immigrant community that barely survived construction of Dodger Stadium in the early 1960s. To this day, whenever government tries to build against their will, residents recall the sad specter of their long-gone neighbors over the hill--the people evicted from Chavez Ravine.

“It happened in such an ugly way, we just can’t forget,” said Alicia Brown, who has lived in the Solano Canyon area since 1939. “This Caltrans project, we just know it will impact the neighborhood in a horrible way.”

Caltrans officials say the project will curtail side-swipe collisions resulting from the sudden merger of two lanes coming off the southbound Golden State Freeway. They say once the agency determined the effects on the community would be minor, it was not required to perform an environmental impact report.

Today, Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) and Senate majority leader Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles) are scheduled to meet privately with Caltrans officials to address the community’s anxiety. But with the money already allocated, Caltrans officials expect to begin construction in early June unless a dramatic reversal occurs.

In an era in which legislators agree that major money and work is needed to overhaul California’s road system, such local disputes are bound to produce more snags.

Members of the Solano Community Assn. say that two years of nighttime construction will close local traffic arteries and destroy residents’ sleep. They fear the noise and glare from flood lights, backhoes and scrapers will plague the normally quiet canyon.

“These people are going to be zombies,” said Sallie Neubauer, president of the Citizens Committee to Save Elysian Park.

Residents complain that children on their way to Solano Ave. Elementary School, which sits within jumping distance of the freeway, will have to breath dust and walk through a heavy construction site every day, and that more than 130 trees will be removed as a wider swath is cut through Elysian Park.

Caltrans officials argue that the extra lane will move traffic along so that drivers won’t feel compelled to take side streets. The removed trees will be replaced with twice as many mature trees, and Caltrans property will be given to Elysian Park to replace what is lost, said project manager Jin Lee.

He pledged the agency will comply with state and federal noise laws.

Rita Ruiz has lived in Solano Canyon since 1926, when it was a modest neighborhood of Germans, Russians, Slavs, Italians and Mexicans set in the eroded gulleys and stunted shrubs east of downtown. She remembers how Basques from the north would graze their sheep on the hills, and a boy from the railroad would break the dawn silence, ringing a bell to wake the workers.

Then in the ‘50s, many of the residents were evicted for a federally funded housing project that was never built. In 1958, the first year the Dodgers played in L.A., Walter O’Malley bought the land, and the next year the last 20 homeowners were evicted in an ugly confrontation with sheriff’s deputies.

To L.A.’s Eastside residents, the eviction became an enduring symbol of the city’s historically racist treatment of Latinos. “Every time something happens around here, we all band together,” Ruiz said. “Now, Caltrans is stabbing us in the back. They never let us know before the project is already going on.”

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Lane Addition

The lane addition on the southbound Pasadena Freeway will run from the southbound Interstate 5 connection to Hill Street.