Panel Seeks Curbs on 710 Expansion Plan

Amid public outcry that a refurbished Long Beach Freeway could remove hundreds of homes, local officials are asking if current plans could be altered so less land would be needed to widen the 18-mile freeway from East Los Angeles to Long Beach.

A key panel will ask engineers at a meeting today if changes could be made so that fewer homes would fall within the footprint of three leading proposals, said William C. Pagett, chairman of a panel of local and state officials reviewing the project.

Large maps will be on display today showing the general impact the three proposals could have on 12 cities. Community groups that have called for a public airing of those maps in recent days promise that members will attend to review the maps.

Others want the panel, known as the Technical Advisory Committee, to hold its sessions at night.

“Not everybody can take off in the middle of the day. They have to go to work,” said Dave San Jose, vice president of the Coolidge Triangle Neighborhood Assn. in Long Beach, where nearly 300 homes may be targeted.

Some residents learned from newspaper articles last week that their neighborhoods would be affected by the freeway project, prompting criticism of the $569,060 public education effort that has accompanied an engineering study of the freeway. The technical committee will hear a report on the outreach effort today.

The committee, which consists largely of representatives of cities along the freeway, is due to choose a preferred plan within the next few weeks. A second panel will take a vote, probably in June. Construction probably would not start until 2011 or later.

One plan receiving close attention would create elevated truck lanes on either side of the freeway to ease congestion caused by cargo shipped from the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles.

Another plan would elevate carpool and bus lanes in the freeway’s center, and a third would expand major cross streets and lengthen the Terminal Island Freeway.

Pagett said that officials in some cities want to know what can be done to minimize the amount of land needed to expand the Long Beach Freeway.

For instance, placing the elevated truck lanes in the freeway’s median rather than on either side could reduce the land required in cities such as Bell, Bell Gardens and Commerce, he said. More land might be saved by creating vertical walls along the freeway rather than the slopes most commonly used on area freeways, he said.

David Levinsohn, lead consultant at Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc., said that changing the plans at this point is not included in the scope of the $3.9-million study, which is due for completion by year’s end.

The Technical Advisory Committee will meet today and again on April 23 at 1:30 p.m. at Long Beach Energy, 2400 E. Spring St., Long Beach. More meetings are expected to follow before the panel selects a plan.