Letter to the Editor: Gov. Jerry Brown Kills the 710 Surface Freeway

In 1976, a newly-elected Gov. Jerry Brown shocked the transportation establishment by deciding that what would have become the nation's most destructive freeway not be built. 

Responding to the state's obligation under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to assess the impacts and alternatives of the proposed extension of the 710 freeway through South Pasadena, El Sereno, Alhambra, and Pasadena, Brown concluded that the destruction of three communities, hundreds of historic homes, and thousands of mature trees was not acceptable.

On October 4, 2011, 35 years later, Brown finally finished the job. He signed Assembly Bill 751, authored by Gil Cedillo, to restore the right of South Pasadena and the other 710 corridor cities to veto any freeway across local streets. 

Ever since 1982, after the federal government had rejected Brown's alternative to the 710 project, section 100.4 of the California Streets and Highway Code deprived South Pasadena and her neighbors of a right held by every other city in California: to reject a new freeway that would close city streets within their jurisdictions. 

Section 100.4 disabled the cities in the proposed 710 corridor from their ability to refuse a “freeway agreement” and thereby prevent the damage that the road would produce. Cedillo's measure (2011 Stats., Ch. 439) repealed that exception.  Now, for the first time in three decades, the 710 corridor cities once again govern their futures.

Restoration of each city's right to a "freeway agreement" ratifies the reality and consensus developed among contending Southern California interests that the destructive 710 freeway should never be built. Even project proponents were vexed to produce a proposal acceptable to the transportation establishment; after a federal court in 1973 forced preparation of a CEQA environmental assessment, it took state and federal authorities 25 years to agree on a project. 

Once the 710 project was approved, however, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, South Pasadena, and others, challenged it. In 1999, the freeway was enjoined on the merits in a landmark opinion by U.S. Judge Dean Pregerson. (City of South Pasadena v. Slater (C.D. Cal. 1999) 56 F. Supp.2d 1106.) 

Four years later, the Federal Highway Administration and CalTrans rescinded their 710 approvals.  As project proponents attempted to revive the freeway, former CalTrans directors admitted in retirement what they could not declare while in office:  The surface route will never happen.

Now at last, with the return of Brown to the state Capitol, a responsible official in office has ratified this reality.

With the death of the 710 freeway, where does Southern California transportation policy go from here?

First, now that construction of a surface route 710 is inconceivable, that notion can be removed from further consideration in CalTrans' and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority's currently pending review of other transportation futures in the former freeway corridor. 

Indeed, enactment of AB 751 was largely motivated to take the surface freeway off the table and thereby give South Pasadena no excuse not to participate in this new CEQA assessment. By ratifying that reality, Caltrans and the MTA can ensure vigorous and broad-based community examination of alternative futures, be they greater reliance on rail to move freight from the ports to the interior, a bored tunnel, improved public transit, or other measures to reduce congestion.

Second, Caltrans can now dispose of the more than 500 surface properties it has held in the corridor communities for half a century in anticipation of the freeway's construction.

Caltrans' occupation of Pasadena, El Sereno, and South Pasadena has now exceeded the 44-year occupation of Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union. It is time for these properties to be returned to their communities—indeed, in a few cases to their former owners and long-term tenants—and for the proceeds to be restored to our impoverished state's treasury.

And finally, at a time when the state's basic environmental law, CEQA, is being challenged as inefficient and riddled by exceptions of short-term benefit, the 710 freeway history emerges as one of the great CEQA success stories. Because that law, enforced by the courts, required rational justification of the 710 project before its host communities could be destroyed, those cities have emerged as among the southland's most exemplary and admired.

The state will receive a desperately-needed infusion of cash. And if properly applied, CEQA will now produce from Caltrans and MTA the well-informed decisions required to define the region's transportation future.

Antonio Rossmann has represented South Pasadena in the 710 freeway fight since 1988. He also teaches at UC Berkeley School of Law. The views expressed in this article are solely his.