Highway vs. Hearth

Officially, the cause of Betty Brough’s death was complications from pneumonia.

But the 73-year-old woman’s friends and relatives believe something else may have contributed to her death: Caltrans’ decision to demolish nearly 70 houses and other properties, including Brough’s home, to widen a four-mile stretch of the San Diego Freeway in West Los Angeles and Culver City for carpool lanes.

Though the threatened destruction of her home was months away, and Caltrans offered to relocate her to a comparable home, Brough’s health declined and, when she was afflicted with pneumonia, she refused life support and died. Her friends said she died of a broken heart.

So, too, they say, did her husband.

Eddie Brough, 75, had died nine months before his wife, plunging her into depression. The official cause was a heart attack. Betty told everyone the prospect of moving had put her husband under such stress that it “was too much for him to handle.”

Betty, known as a neighborhood sparkplug, vowed to fight to save her home of 25 years at 3511 Tuller Ave. Then she simply gave up, say those who knew her. Heartbroken over both the loss of her husband and the pending loss of her home, she died Oct. 29.

“First my dad, then my mom,” said Diane Vail of Camarillo, one of the Broughs’ two daughters. “We say Caltrans killed my parents and we truly believe that.”

Of course, that can’t be proved.

It may be hyperbole born of grief, but it illustrates the anguish faced by families living in the path of Caltrans’ bulldozers.

Across Southern California, Caltrans is expanding freeways to accommodate ever-increasing traffic. In Los Angeles County alone, the state has $2.7 billion worth of diamond lane projects underway.

But with much of Caltrans’ center-lane space and other existing rights of way used up, expansion plans are hitting older freeways and established communities such as Palms and Culver City.

It is all part of a master plan to build carpool lanes on nearly every Los Angeles County freeway. It cannot be a painless process in a county that already has the most extensive network of carpool lanes in the nation.

“We took the easiest [freeway projects] first, those with a low impact and high benefit,” said Ronald Kosinski, chief environmental planner for Caltrans’ Los Angeles region. “Now we are moving into the higher-impact, higher-cost alternatives.”

More Expansion in the Works

Kosinski has helped oversee the construction of 185 miles of diamond lanes so far. Another 18 miles are under construction, with 127 miles in the planning or design stage.

About 70 property owners, nearly all of them single-family homeowners like the Broughs, are being forced to sell all or parts of their properties along a stretch of the San Diego Freeway between the Marina and Santa Monica freeways, a four-mile, $120-million project.

Kosinski would not say how much property owners would be offered, but he said Caltrans would pay market prices.

Along the Santa Ana Freeway in Downey and Norwalk, from the Orange County line to the San Gabriel River Freeway, about 150 property owners could face forced sales as part of another planned diamond lane project.

So many homes are threatened that Caltrans is considering a plan to double-deck the freeway to avoid displacing people.

The double-decking, on a scale similar to that of the busway/carpool-lane structure on the Harbor Freeway, would be more expensive, but would spare more homes and businesses along the Santa Ana Freeway, Caltrans officials say.

“It may make more sense to go to an elevated structure rather than displacing large businesses or historic homes,” said Frank Quon, Caltrans’ chief of operations in Los Angeles.

Another possibility, still in very unofficial talking stages, is operating some lanes on the upper deck as toll lanes.

Whether the new lanes are built on the ground or elevated, the Santa Ana Freeway project is designed to lessen the impact of the bottleneck that will be created when a Santa Ana Freeway widening project is completed over the next few years.

The Orange County portion of the freeway will be 10 lanes wide when it hits Los Angeles County, where it will narrow to six lanes.

Still another carpool lane project would take 13 homes, nearly all of them in Pacoima, and parts of 20 businesses for a lane-widening project on the Golden State Freeway between the Ventura and Ronald Reagan freeways.

And on the horizon is a diamond lane extension on the San Bernardino Freeway that could take scores of homes and businesses in the San Gabriel Valley.

But the pain of disruption and relocation for some does eventually translate into greater convenience and mobility for many others.

Carpoolers are especially excited by the extension of diamond lanes. Carpool lanes now extend from the junction of the San Diego and Century freeways deep into Orange County.

Elizabeth Losh lives in Santa Monica and carpools to UC Irvine, where she is an administrator of a writing program. She and members of her carpool park near Palms and Sawtelle boulevards. Losh said the drive home from Orange County is a breeze until the carpool lane ends near Los Angeles International Airport, where cars from the Century Freeway, the airport and the San Diego Freeway merge.

“We will often spend more time getting to Palms and Sawtelle from the point where the carpool lane ends at the Century Freeway than we do getting from Irvine to the 105,” Losh said.

But for those who live by the freeways, the next few years will be a nerve-racking time. Property values will suffer. Those who are not bought out but who live close to the freeways will have to deal with construction noise, dust and maybe detours on local streets.

Caltrans schedules most of its freeway construction work at night to help ease congestion on the freeways. It’s a service for commuters but a potential problem for people living nearby.

Acknowledging the disruption, the state erects sound walls on any construction project near homes, said Caltrans’ Kosinski.

It’s a Long, Complex Process

One problem for which there apparently is no easy solution is the lengthy process of design, planning and funding freeway expansions.

Any kind of freeway construction brings with it a system of checks and balances. Cities along the route are brought into the planning process, as are federal and state regulatory agencies.

As the government machinery grinds along at a glacial pace, a different kind of drama unfolds in neighborhoods.

Consider the San Diego Freeway project that the Broughs found so devastating.

In Caltrans terminology, it is ready to go.

Still, construction is not scheduled to begin until the winter of 2003-04. Then it will take about three years to complete.

In the meantime, the state will move in to buy the homes along the four-mile route.

That process could take a year and a half, depending on the problems Caltrans encounters with homeowners.

State appraisers will prepare bids, based on what they consider fair purchase prices, and offer relocation money.

Caltrans will pay closing costs on new homes, make up an interest rate differential if a new rate is higher than the old one, pay moving costs and make other concessions, such as extra payments for homeowners operating businesses out of their houses.

Caltrans officials say they take pains to be gentle, fair and sensitive when they move into a community and force people from their homes.

“You have to have a high level of sensitivity and remember that this is their house you are taking,” said Kosinski. But, he said, “It certainly is traumatic.” He recalled seeing people “break down and cry and [say] they couldn’t bear to leave their homes.”

In some cases, houses closest to the freeway will be taken, but not those across the street.

Neighbors of Eddie and Betty Brough on Tuller Avenue in the Palms area, like the Broughs, got a shock when they learned that Caltrans was serious about widening the freeway near their homes. They had heard rumors for a long time, but hoped the day would never come.

“Why us? We don’t bother anyone,” said Ilene Roisentul, who has lived on Tuller with her husband, Saul, for 30 years. Caltrans will buy their house and demolish it. “Where are we going to go? It’s upsetting, very upsetting.”

Saul Roisentul operates a business out of his home, Saul’s Drapery Service, and said he can’t imagine setting up shop anywhere else on the Westside for what he is paying.

“We live on the best side of Los Angeles: the Westside,” he said.

Some, like the Broughs, were traumatized.

Others expressed anger, then resignation. Some got lawyers. Even now, there are those who deny that the day they lose their homes will ever come.

The homes on Tuller Avenue are the comfortable sort that most commuters pass without notice. Some are hidden behind sound walls. Others peek out at the freeway through dense shrubs. Blink and you miss them.

You can spot the Roisentuls’ home because of the rooster weather vane.

Life along the freeway may not seem like everyone’s version of Shangri-La. Among the drawbacks: the 319,000 cars and trucks that pass the backyard each day during peak periods on one of the nation’s busiest freeways.

The noise can be thunderous. The air dirty. The odd angles of streets, cul-de-sacs and dead-ends created when the freeway was built create traffic problems.

Creating Close-Knit Communities

But the sealed-off streets with dead-ends against the freeway also can be perfect incubators for close-knit communities.

The residents, some of whom have lived there for 40 years, say they got used to the noise. They compare the steady hum of engines and rubber hitting the roadway to having a noisy river in the backyard.

Neighbors know not to shout to someone across the street because they might not be heard.

So, in the 3500 block of Tuller, where everyone knows everyone else, the Broughs’ deaths were like deaths in the family.

Tom and Pat Whiteside have made their home across the street from the Broughs, for 46 years. They raised eight children in the house, and now have 19 grandchildren.

Things were never the same for Betty after Eddie died, Pat Whiteside said.

“Every time I went over there she was crying. I put my arms around her,” Whiteside said. “These were people who planned on spending the rest of their lives in their home. Then to be told all of a sudden: You are out of here. It did not matter how much money they were offered. This was their home.”

Added Tom Whiteside: “Betty was so depressed about her husband dying and losing the place that her spirit died.”

On another section of Tuller Avenue, in Culver City, Georgina Huskey, an administrator with the state, contemplates losing her house, which is right up against the Culver Boulevard onramp. “The noise bothered us at first, but you get used to it,” she said.

“We have been living under this cloud for two years now,” she said. Huskey is one of those contemplating a lawsuit.

“The impact on our lives will be huge,” she said.

“We love our house. We love our neighbors. We watch out for each other.”

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Freeway Expansion Options

Caltrans is studying ways of widening the Santa Ana Freeway (Interstate 5). Because a single lane in each direction would not satisfy projected traffic demands, Caltrans is studying a much bigger project that might include double-decking portions of the freeway and expanding it beyond the San Gabriel River Freeway

(I-605) to the Long Beach Freeway (I-710).

Source: Caltrans