Pasadena Rescinds Longtime Backing on 710 Freeway Plan

The Pasadena City Council voted early Tuesday to reverse itself and oppose the Long Beach Freeway extension, striking a major blow to a project that has dragged on for more than three decades and caused a feudal war between neighboring cities.

At 1 a.m., after dozens of speakers weighed in with passion on both sides, council members voted 5 to 3 to end their long-standing support for the freeway extension, which would plug a 6.2-mile gap between the Foothill and San Bernardino freeways. The proposed freeway would cut through parts of Pasadena, El Sereno and South Pasadena.

Freeway opponents hailed the vote, saying that there are better ways to direct traffic on surface streets.

“Pasadena is the biggest city on the route,” said Richard Moe, president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. “This will cause Caltrans and others to really step back and decide it doesn’t deserve to be built.”

But on Tuesday, state transportation officials said it would take more than the Pasadena City Council to bury the project.

“We’ve a legislative mandate to build this project and federal support,” said Ron Kosinski, Caltrans chief environmental planner. “It would take the governor to kill this project.”

The proposed extension would eliminate 6,000 trees and 900 homes, many of which were built at the turn of the century. As part of a regional freeway plan, construction began in 1951 and stopped 6.2 miles from completion in 1965, a year after South Pasadena residents began protesting.

State and federal transportation officials have long said Pasadena’s support for the roadway construction was crucial in the face of vehement opposition from environmentalists, historic preservationists and South Pasadena residents, whose tree-lined, Norman Rockwell neighborhoods would be cut in half by the extension.

Four years ago, the council voted in favor of the project. And Monday night, officials from nearby cities urged the council to stay the course, arguing that the freeway is a regional necessity that would siphon off a daily flood of traffic that clogs and pollutes their streets.

The mayor of Monrovia, Bob Bartlett, said a change of heart would show “you just care about your own parochial needs.”

But as the council meeting pushed into the bleary hours of Tuesday morning, Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard echoed other speakers who said the future of the city and the region must wean itself from freeway dependency and look toward light rail and other alternatives.

He and others pointed to fundamental changes in Pasadena itself, a full-service city that increasingly draws people to live, work, dine and shop within its limits.

“It seems we need to get people out of their cars,” said Bogaard, adding that the project would probably just create more traffic. “We need to set a new direction.”

Bogaard voted against the freeway and was joined by council members Steve Madison, Paul Little, Bill Crowfoot and Steve Haderlein. Madison called the freeway “time capsule public policy” because it was conceived more than half a century ago. Others in the crowd agreed that the long-delayed extension creates false hope that a panacea is coming to remedy the city’s traffic burdens.

“The fact that we are in limbo all these years has strangled our city,” said Carolyn Naber, president of the West Pasadena Residents’ Assn. “There is a point when Pasadena has to realize this freeway is not going to be built.”

Council members Chris Holden, Joyce Streator and Sidney F. Tyler voted to maintain support for the project.

Although the $1.4-billion project was approved by federal transportation officials in 1998, freeway supporters have suffered significant setbacks.

The next step for the project will probably be the resolution of a federal lawsuit filed by South Pasadena, which wants to scuttle the freeway. The city won an injunction last year halting construction, although the state continues with design work. No trial date has been set and the city and transportation officials are in mediation over a possible compromise.

In June, Rep. James Rogan (R-Glendale) added another roadblock with a successful effort to ban spending money from a federal transportation bill on the project. And in what many considered another sign of eroding support for the freeway, Rep. Matthew “Marty” Martinez (D-Monterey Park), one of the extension’s biggest advocates, lost his reelection bid in the March primary.

State Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), who opposes the freeway, said Tuesday’s decision is the latest blow for a project that “no one expects to be built in their lifetime.”

“South Pasadena has always been characterized as alone against the freeway,” he said. “Now, none of the areas this freeway impacts favor its completion.”

South Pasadena Mayor Dorothy Cohen said she was elated by the vote. “What might have been a good idea 50 or 60 years ago doesn’t work today,” she said. “Freeways just attract more traffic. It would be an environmental disaster.”

But freeway supporters said the extension is a critical link in the county’s transportation plan and that the council’s decision was purely political. Though serious, they said, it does not mean the end for their cause. “There are other forces,” said Nat Read, chairman of the 710 Freeway Coalition. “There are other factors.”

In neighboring Alhambra, where the freeway ends and dumps cars onto Valley Boulevard, officials vowed to continue their fight for the completion.

“It is unfortunate that a 30-year ally has changed its position,” said Mike Holmes, Alhambra’s transportation analyst, who attended the meeting. “But that doesn’t stop the 710 Freeway.”

The animosity between South Pasadena and Alhambra almost exploded last summer when Alhambra blocked some of the traffic flowing into its streets from the freeway--a move seen by South Pasadena residents as an attempt to back up congestion into their neighborhoods. But tempers have cooled since then.