Tunnels

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.

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.

Some of them are said to be big enough to accommodate railroad cars. They may reach a depth of 60 feet, and are reported to be equipped with cables and electric motors that move food, fuel -- and probably some of the heaviest rockets that Hamas aims at Israel. They also are one of the main reasons fighting is continuing in the Gaza Strip.

The Big Dig tunnel where a woman was crushed to death in a ceiling collapse last summer will reopen today, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick said. Workers have installed and tested a new bracket-and-hanger system to support the concrete ceiling panels along a half-mile stretch of the tunnel, Patrick said.

A tunnel in Boston's Big Dig highway complex reopened six months after a section of its ceiling collapsed and killed a woman in a car. The eastbound lanes of the Interstate 90 connector tunnel had been closed since the July 10 collapse that killed Milena Del Valle, 38. The tunnel was reopened after inspectors approved repairs in which workers installed a bracket-and-hanger system to support the concrete ceiling panels.

Geological tests to determine if a water conduit and a highway tunnel can be built between Riverside and Orange counties are scheduled to begin this week in the rugged Santa Ana Mountains . The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California plans to drill two deep holes to explore groundwater levels as well as rock and soil conditions along the routes of the proposed projects.

Seven of the largest tunnels discovered under the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years have yet to be filled in, authorities said, raising concerns because smugglers have tried to reuse such passages before. Among the unfilled tunnels, created to ferry people and drugs, is the longest one yet found -- extending nearly half a mile from San Diego to Tijuana. Nearby, another sophisticated passageway once known as the Taj Mahal of tunnels has been sitting unfilled for 13 years, authorities say.

Two decades ago, Rep. Henry A. Waxman wrote into law a ban on the use of federal funds to build a subway tunnel in the Fairfax district of Los Angeles, worried that construction could trigger an underground gas explosion. On Wednesday, the Los Angeles Democrat -- now convinced that new technology could make drilling safe -- persuaded the House to repeal his 1985 law, removing a major political obstacle to extending the line to the Westside. The one-page bill passed on a voice vote.

When Mayor Greg Nickels uses the phrase "the Big Ugly," he is referring to the 2.2-mile-long Alaskan Way Viaduct, the aging, earthquake-vulnerable elevated expressway that separates much of downtown Seattle from Elliott Bay, one of the city's iconic natural features. But the Big Ugly also is an apt characterization of the political debacle unfolding here over whether -- and how -- the 54-year-old concrete roadway should be replaced.

The Department of Homeland Security has announced that it will fill in seven cross-border tunnels that critics say pose a national security risk because they could be reused by smugglers. The Los Angeles Times reported in January that the tunnels had not been filled, largely because of jurisdictional issues and a lack of money.