Metro Board Votes Down 710 Freeway Tunnel

Despite a recommendation from the L.A. Metropolitan Transportation Authority staff to approve a 4.9-mile, $3.2-billion single-bore tunnel closing the 710 Freeway gap, Metro’s Board of Directors on Thursday voted unanimously against it.
The decision essentially ended a 50-year debate over the controversial SR-710 project, the latest incarnation of which sought to bore beneath through El Sereno, South Pasadena and Pasadena to connect the “missing segment” of the 710 freeway between the 10 and 210 freeways.
Instead, the Metro board decided to rededicate $105 million of Measure R funds toward a host of incremental transportation improvement plans, such as coordinated traffic signal timing, ramp metering, street widening, as well as promotion of carpooling and transit use. Another $645 million will be available for further allocation along the corridor.
“To me, it made sense with what came out of the report,” said board chairman John Fasana, a city councilman from Duarte. “But at the same time, a theory on paper doesn’t actually provide any relief to the affected communities. I felt the tunnel was the best approach, but I’ve also come to realize that it’s unfundable, and if it happened, it would be many years away.
“There are other improvements…that can counteract some of the increasing traffic that is always out there, and I think we have reached a point where a decision needs to be made.”
When the roll-call vote — which felt so historic that Eric Garcetti, the L.A. City Mayor and member of the Metro board, raised his cellphone to film it — was finished, a cheer went up in the overflowing boardroom. For more than two hours, many of the few hundred officials and residents who attended the meeting debated the project, probably for the last time.
In 1965, the California Transportation Authority opened the stretch of the 710 between the 10 Freeway and its current terminus on Valley Boulevard in Alhambra. The planned northern route of the freeway was delayed by protests from South Pasadena, which was among the entities that would file lawsuits to stop the extension over the next few decades, starting with the first in 1973.
The latest effort to close the gap began in 2008 with the passage of Measure R, the half-cent sales tax increase that earmarked $780,000 for the SR-710 project, on which Metro and Caltrans partnered.
In 2012, a Draft Environmental Impact Report advanced five alternatives: no build; transportation system management/transportation demand management; bus rapid transit; light rail transit and a freeway tunnel.
In March of 2015, the Draft EIR/EIS was released and open for public comment; more than 8,000 comments were filed, Metro reported.
At last week’s meeting, comments from tunnel proponents indicated that they fear the TDM/TSM plan would not diminish traffic on the local streets in Alhambra and neighboring cities.
“TSM and TDM actually increase cut-through traffic in our neighborhoods,” Alhambra Mayor David Mejia said. “Our communities have suffered enough.”
Richard Schneider, mayor pro tem for South Pasadena, sought to persuade board members to bury the project forever.
“South Pasadena wants to make sure the tunnel is definitely no longer considered an alternative and not simply placed on the shelf where it can be reconsidered in the future,” Schneider said.
District 5 County Supervisor Kathryn Barger, a board member and San Marino resident, said she wrestled with the decision before deciding to sign on to Fasana’s motion to support the TSM/TDM alternative instead of the tunnel.
“We have issues right now that need to be addressed and the tunnel, whether it be built or not, is not going to fix what’s happening right now in our communities,” she said. “This motion will move us forward.”