Ninety minutes into a showdown meeting Monday night over the controversial 710 Freeway extension proposals through Pasadena, Councilman Gene Masuda popped the question on everyone’s mind.
“How much weight are you going to give to the consideration of neighborhoods?” he asked the high-priced staff and even higher-priced consultants working the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. “These are people from our district in West Pasadena and they want an answer to that. How much weight will you give their input?”
Silence, total silence.
“Speak up,” someone yelled.
“Zero,” shouted another.
“The answer says it all,” said another to the laughter of the crowd at the special City Council meeting held at the Pasadena Convention Center.
Finally, as the seconds kept ticking away, Michelle Smith, project manager for the 710 project, stammered, “No, I, I’m only pausing because I am looking for a number . . . or a clearly minimized environmental impact . . . so I would say it would be weighted with some of the traffic factors, as well as, is it fundable . . . ”
“The reason why I ask this is because it’s not just West Pasadena,” Masuda responded. “I represent East Pasadena . . . we are a city with many neighborhoods and all the districts have wonderful neighborhoods and I wouldn’t want this to happen to mine.”
It was a moment of in truth in the first battle in the renewed 50-year war over a freeway nobody along the route from Alhambra to the Foothill (210)/ Ventura (134) freeway interchange seems to want: Pasadena was united and spoke with one voice.
With a crowd some 500 exuberant, impassioned and informed people overflowing a large meeting room at the Convention Center — people who live on the proposed 710 corridor through Pasadena, South Pasadena and the Los Angeles neighborhoods of El Sereno, Highland Park and Garavanza — Pasadena stood tall and proud.
The City Council unanimously opposed freeway routes that would turn Avenue 64 into a highway, taking out stately trees and beautiful homes, tunneling through the Arroyo Seco until it surfaced in West Pasadena at the 134 Freeway — taking out dozens of homes — or an option that would cut through the heart of Old Pasadena.
The tie to the extension of Measure R is devastating.
But…BUY OUT EVERYONE IN THE PATH OF THE FREEWAY AND GIVE THEM THE $$$ IN A SPECIAL TAX-FREE PAYOUT! My family’s old friend, George Putnam had alot of land on his ranch in Chino, and a School District took part of it AND THEN TAXED HIM ON THE ALREADY LOW PRICE PAID UNDER EMMINENT DOMAIN! Fortunately, George had a 5 day a week Radio Show on 870 am to tell everyone about it every week!
It’s ALL ABOUT THE MONEY!!! The Caltrans PIGS want the freeway to FATTEN UP THE UNIONS AND THEY SEE THIS DEPRESSED REAL ESTATE MARKET AS A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY TO SEIZE THOSE HOMES IT NEEDS TO BUILD.
They should definitely BUILD THAT FREEWAY EXTENSION ANY WAY THEY CAN. It would cut down seriously on traffic congestion. But the sneaky, underhanded way they’re trying to pull this off, IT’LL NEVER HAPPEN.
Hmmm…
We’re meeting tonight in Winnetka, where the lovely new bridge hardware over the L.A. River apparently came only when the funding Metro grant proposal left in some of the parking restrictions for the new rush hour lane…at the expense of the people who used to be able to park in front of their house.
Eh, forget that…as long as Metro gets to be a conduit for a fast-track shovel ready project….
Coulda been worse, the grant writer supposedly wanted no parking 24 hours!
The LA Mayor & his gang on the MTA Board will soon realize that Pasadena is not LA, a city they are used to railroading over. Residents here have a voice unlike the ones that inhabit LA. They will face the wrath and strength of a community united to preserve their neighborhoods and way of life. Back off Villar and your surrogates.
Not only are these neighbors united and organized, but they are also smart and put their money where their mouth is.
These neighbors have an excellent legal track record in successfully opposing this freeway extension.
“Hyperbole aside, the MTA has ignited the flames of public discontent that could well jeopardize efforts to get voters to approve Measure R-2 in November, which would extend the half-cent sales tax 60 years into the future so tens of billions of dollars can be borrowed now to speed construction of a long list of highway projects, the subway-to-the-sea and other mass transit proposals.”
You got that right!
NO ON PROPOSITION R
This thing has had more resurrections than Freddie.
IT
MUST
DIE
What will it take to put the final nail in the coffin of this project? Anyone have even a remote guess?
I am the 710 Zombie Freeway, I will never die! I will devour everthing in my path: homes, schools, communities, bikes, baby strollers, and bizzy-body bizzy-boots! Then I will expell more smog! Oh smog. beautiful smog, it gives us those peachy-pink sunsets featured on METRO’s handbills about ME!.
If they wanted to tunnel cheaply, they only need to uncork Henry Huntington, who’s undoubtedly spinning at record speeds, seeing how his beloved railways has been bought and sold, unplugged and retrofitted with rubber and diesel, with their publicly held remnants sent careening out of control by bureacrats into the same lovely neighborhoods for which their establishment was meant to foster.
But then again, had the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 not come along, the old MTA would still be around…all the more unweildy, under the auspices of the Proprietory Department of Water & Power.
Ooooh, this just in!
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505245_162-57495446/audit-caltrans-mismanaged-710-extension-homes/
I had freinds in one of these beautiful hillside homes…with Cal Trans as their landlord.
Finally gave up and bought a home elsewhere.
“Caltrans spent $22.5 million since 2008 to maintain homes it owns in and near Pasadena, but couldn’t show the work was necessary or cost-effective, the report finds” -LA Times.
We have to starve the beast–the state of california. Vote down all proposed tax increase measures by Brown and extension of the local Measure R. They already have too much money that is wasted.