Long Beach Freeway

So many of the people advocating completion of the Long Beach Freeway (710) talk only about the increasing traffic on our surface streets between the two stubs of the freeway. They seem to think only of the passenger commuter cars. It should be remembered that this freeway is proposed as a major truck route, designed to provide a through route for cargo truck traffic from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach into the northern and eastern areas of the county. They accuse South Pasadena residents of being obstinate obstructionists who are standing alone in blocking the freeway extension.

Pressure is mounting on the California Department of Transportation to sell 460 homes it acquired decades ago in Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno to make way for an extension of the 710 Freeway that has been stalled ever since. But officials say it could be years before any decision is made on the properties. Caltrans bought the homes in the 1950s, '60s and '70s to accommodate plans to extend the northern end of the Long Beach Freeway from Alhambra, where it ends now, to the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena.

Regarding Mr. (Arthur) Flemming's letter published Oct. 19, I am in agreement with the extension of the 710 freeway beyond its current terminus and assume that it was not originally extended due to the uncertainty of the route (through or around South Pasadena). Mr. Flemming raises a point which should be given adequate consideration. The residents of South Pasadena, or at least a very vocal percentage, have lobbied to keep the freeway from bisecting their community. Although only 300-plus people were present for the anti-710 march, out of a city whose population is approximately 24,000, I believe the community's sentiment is that they would prefer no freeway to any alternative route.

Each of the many freeways that crisscross our city has a personality. Interstate 710, still known to us L.A. old-timers as the Long Beach Freeway, is a working man hauling freight and merchandise day and night. The Santa Monica Freeway is ambitious and vain, an actor rushing to a casting call and zipping past you in his sports car. The oldest of them all is the Pasadena Freeway. He's your crotchety and eccentric grandfather. Stubborn, set in his ways, and still wearing fashions from the middle of the last century.

The City Council has reaffirmed its commitment to the completion of the Long Beach Freeway extension by renewing its contract with a Washington lobbying firm that helped persuade federal transportation officials to support the project. Council members have agreed to pay the Ferguson Co. $36,000 and $5,000 in expenses for work until September 1998. "We'll continue to lobby on the 710 extension until the project breaks ground," said City Manager Julio Fuentes.

In "Freeway: Link to Community Disaster" (Aug. 13), Sam Hall Kaplan did not do his homework and takes literary license in mouthing the pap that South Pasadena has fed us for 36 years, creating congestion by reducing freeway and surface traffic to one lane through its city and such other restrictions. Did it ever occur to Kaplan to: --Check with other concerned foothill communities such as Pasadena, Glendale, La Canada, La Crescenta, Montrose, Alhambra, Arcadia, San Gabriel and beyond?

Rolling a new obstacle into the path of the long-delayed Long Beach Freeway extension, two East Los Angeles community groups filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging that the roadway discriminates against Latinos.

A congested Alhambra intersection was the setting Friday for a skirmish in the long-running public relations war over the controversial Long Beach (710) Freeway completion project. Western San Gabriel Valley officials, including a U.S. congressman and a state legislator, called for federal and state transportation officials to finish the freeway. "No one here is advocating the construction of a new freeway, " said Alhambra Mayor Talmage V.

A gasoline leak shut down a stretch of the Long Beach Freeway on Monday, causing a traffic jam just as motorists were returning to town at the end of the Labor Day weekend. The northbound lanes of the freeway were shut at about 4:15 p.m., north of Washington Boulevard in Commerce, to allow a Caltrans crew to sop up the gas. Nearly a full tank from a Ford Bronco, 20 to 25 gallons of gas, leaked onto the roadway, said California Highway Patrol Officer Richard Perez.

Six people were injured, two critically, when a van careened out of control Tuesday and slammed into an embankment on the Long Beach Freeway in South Gate, investigators said. Esperanza Loza Gutierrez and her husband, Luis, both 25, suffered severe head injuries when the van in which they were passengers struck two cars and spun out of control in the freeway's southbound lanes, north of Imperial Highway, shortly after 10 a.m., said California Highway Patrolman Craig Wilson.

On Google Maps, it looks like a severed limb: Sticking out from the intersection of Highway 134 and Interstate 210 in Pasadena is the stump of a freeway heading south, coming to an abrupt end after about half a mile at Del Mar Boulevard. There's a matching stub 4 1/2 miles away, where the rest of Interstate 710 picks up at Valley Boulevard in Alhambra and runs 23 miles to the port of Long Beach. Closing that gap has been the subject of furious debate since the 1960s, an on-again, off-again contest between homeowners and transportation planners that is suddenly very much on again.

A long-awaited geological study for a proposal to complete the 710 Freeway as a tunnel under either the San Gabriel Valley or northeast Los Angeles found that such a project would be scientifically feasible. The findings mark a small step in what even supporters say is a long road for the tunnel idea, which was proposed by transportation officials and some politicians after residents fought for decades against completing the 710 as an above-ground freeway. The tunnel has also generated opposition, and building it would be significantly more expensive than a regular freeway.

The half-century battle to complete the 710 Freeway through Pasadena and South Pasadena using a surface route could come to an end as early as today if Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs legislation that would bar aboveground construction on a route that has long been considered the missing link in L.A.'s highway system. The bill would eliminate the possibility of completing the final leg of the 710 Freeway from where it ends at Valley Boulevard at the edge of Alhambra to Pasadena using a surface route.

The sensation is palpable, if not slightly remarkable. There you are hurtling southbound in the No. 3 lane on the Long Beach Freeway. Your car is rattling, your tailbone jumping to the rhythm of a concrete washboard abused by years of heavy trucks and piecemeal repairs. Then it happens, between the 105 and Rosecrans. You hit a bump, and suddenly your tires purr, your coffee settles in its cup and the radio reception seems more crisp. You may not know why -- it is the nature of freeways that we seldom consider their mechanics -- but you are now experiencing the I-710 Long Life Pavement Project, as Caltrans calls it. Begun in 2001 and scheduled for completion in the next five years, the transformation of one of Southern California's most neglected freeways is hardly an exercise in speed.

After a four-day trial, a man known as the Long Beach Freeway rapist could be sentenced to up to 200 years in state prison for raping and assaulting women and girls, prosecutors said Monday. Daniel Sanchez, 24, was convicted of 60 of 80 felony counts -- including forcible rape, kidnapping, assault and robbery in connection with attacks on 12 victims between December 2001 and October 2003 -- by Superior Court Judge Gary Hahn, authorities said. The 12 victims were between the ages of 14 and 40. Four of them did not testify, leading prosecutors to dismiss 17 counts.

It's the freeway controversy that just won't quit. The fight over whether to finish the 710 Freeway -- which stops just short of South Pasadena -- has been going on for more than half a century, with the records in a 1998 federal court case so voluminous that they filled some 500 cardboard file boxes.

A 23-year-old man and his 2-year-old son were found shot to death Sunday morning in a car on the shoulder of the southbound 710 Freeway near Long Beach, authorities said. Darnell Davis of Compton and his son, Darnell junior, were identified by police as the two people inside the black sedan near the intersection of the 710 and 91 freeways. California Highway Patrol officers made the discovery shortly before 8 a.m., said Long Beach police spokeswoman Jackie Bezart.

South Pasadena today will hold a special public meeting to discuss a proposal to complete the 710 Freeway by tunneling under the city. The meeting comes as nearby cities such as Alhambra and Monterey Park have expressed support for the plan, which would complete the freeway's "missing link" between the 10 and 210 freeways. South Pasadena has for decades opposed building the freeway, which would threaten historic homes and neighborhoods.