How to Get Nowhere in LA: 710 Freeway Quagmire
http://www.caeconomy.org/reporting/entry/how-to-get-nowhere-in-la-the-710-freeway-quagmire
December 07, 2012 by Justin Ewers
Map showing some of the 710 freeway extensions that have been proposed over the years.
If you’ve ever tried driving north out of Los Angeles from Long Beach, then you know what lies ahead.
Try driving out of town from the coast—or, say, the ports of Long Beach
and Los Angeles, which together make up the nation’s busiest cargo
complex, sending trucks by the tens of thousands up the 710 freeway. For
more than twenty miles, you seem to be sailing through the heart of the
LA Basin. The cities roll by, Compton, South Gate, East LA.
And then, with Pasadena on the horizon, and an easy connection out of
town only a few miles away, the freeway ends. After what can be miles
of standstill traffic, one of LA’s major thoroughfares comes to a dead
stop at a three-way stoplight on a surface street called Valley
Boulevard. More often than not, gridlock and traffic jams await.
The Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority has tried for decades to
tackle this seemingly straightforward infrastructure challenge—
since 1965, to be exact—proposing
a variety of solutions, starting with extending the freeway through
South Pasadena to connect with the 210 on the other side.
Transportation experts have spent years exploring light-rail options
and freight alternatives. They have looked at bus lines and improving
local streets. They have highlighted the thousands of jobs different
projects would create and touted the economic boost easing traffic
congestion would provide.
For more than four decades, none of it has worked.
A hard infrastructure lesson
Even after Los Angeles County voters overwhelmingly approved a measure
in 2008 to raise $40 billion for traffic relief and transportation
upgrades—supporting a
range of successful infrastructure projects across the county—the 710 freeway has remained at a standstill.
Call it the first rule of infrastructure development: If voters don’t
like the project—and if a compelling case can’t be made for how it will
be financed—it’s not going to happen. (Or as an inside joke going around
transit circles puts it: Some projects are so controversial, the city
files them as “not in our lifetime.” The 710 extension, though, should
be listed as “not in God’s lifetime.”)
This lesson has been brought into stark relief this fall as MTA
officials have tried to narrow a long list of options down to twelve
congestion-relief alternatives for the 710 freeway. These include a new
$3.5 billion tunnel connecting the 710 with the 210 less than five miles
away. Among the proposals being considered is an innovative
public/private partnership similar to those being developed by the
Summit’s
Infrastructure financing action team, where private entities could assume some of the cost by charging a toll to use the tunnel.
These new ideas, like traffic on the 710, seem to be getting nowhere
fast. Even before a county sales tax measure failed in November—bringing
into question how
the county would finance the “public” portion of the project—the
controversy was mounting in cities in and around the freeway’s path.
The cities of Pasadena, South Pasadena, La Cañada, and Glendale have
united against both
a surface and underground option, citing the increased truck traffic
and pollution that would come with any extension. The Los Angeles City
Council recently joined them by
unanimously adopting a resolution against the project.
Political gridlock
"You would disrupt some neighborhoods that have existed for
generations," Los Angeles City Councilman Jose Huizar said this fall.
"We, as a city, and any other public agency should not take for granted
the communities that would be impacted the most as Metro and Caltrans
have.”
State Assemblymember Anthony Portantino summed up the growing conventional wisdom around the project in two words: “It stinks.”
The 710’s gridlock may make drivers crazy and transportation experts
cross-eyed, but the ever-elusive solution to this particular
infrastructure challenge can serve a stark reminder for the Economic
Summit.
The Summit’s Action Teams are developing a range of cutting-edge tools
Californians can use to make their regional economies more
prosperous—including a range of
new financing mechanisms that would help move transportation projects forward and proposals that would
simplify the thorny legal process around infrastructure development.
But in the end, these tools work only when voters are willing to rally around them.
Infrastructure projects may create jobs, save money, increase productivity, and drive more profits (and
many of them do). But without public support, they’re dead on arrival.
