Najarian Raises 710 Tunnel Cost Question at
One Community Forum in Pasadena 1


One Community PanelGlendale Mayor Ara Najarian reiterated his concern about the 710 Tunnel proposal’s costs at a One Community symposium Saturday that drew major Southern California transportation agency officials and more than 200 community members.

Some of Najarian’s comments:

“I don’t think that the 710 Tunnel is a viable project to solve the congestion concerns we have, for several reasons. We talk about a gap, the missing link, and SCAG has referred to it as the only missing link…but there are freeways throughout the county that have not been built. To describe the 710 as “the” missing link is a fallacy…Communities have stood up, and rightly so, against many projects. We are a democracy and we protect and cherish the local voices.”

The other issue I have is the cost…The big problem I have is that there is a ‘tipping point’ for the tunnel. If it gets to be greater than $3 billion (I’ve heard inside the MTA), it will fail. The PPP report says if this cost is higher than $5 billion, it will fail. It doesn’t make sense as a community to spend the millions of dollars on consultants, on the finance people, on the engineers, on the outreach people, who are eating their way through that money by the tens of millions of dollars as we speak, only to find years down the road that this is too expensive a project and isn’t feasible.”

Other elected officials gave their views on the tunnel during introductory remarks, with 44th District representative Anthony Portantino saying, “It’s no secret that I don’t support the 710 Tunnel,” and Duarte City Council member John Fasana stating that voter support of Measure R implied support of the 710 Tunnel project.

Najarian was the only elected official who participated in the program sessions. He sat on the second panel discussing 710 expansion ‘guiding principles.’ Other panelists were Metro Highway Program Director Douglas Failing and Parsons Brinkerhoff VP Dr. Eugene Kim. Dr. Kim surprised the audience with his contention that the 710 tunnel should be built, but shouldn’t accommodate truck traffic.

The earlier session of the morning featured Metro Board member Richard Katz, Metrolink CEO John Fenton, and Transit Coalition Director Bart Reed, and although the topic was ‘a sustainable transportation future’ the 710 controversy came up as a question about ‘NIMBY’ resistance to proposed projects.

South Pasadena resident Janet Ervin commented, “Although it was good to see that many people are interested in transportation issues affecting our region, the apparent insistence to ‘close the 710 gap’ shows that Caltrans and Metro have made their decision. They are simply going to provide that data which supports their predetermined plan. They know that a tunnel will not relieve commuter traffic, nor will it be able to handle the increased freight traffic from the ports.”


One thought on “Najarian Raises 710 Tunnel Cost Question at
One Community Forum in Pasadena

  • Nancy Campeau

    Mayor Najarian gets down to the two basic issues in this attempt to foist a useless multi-billion tunnel on Northeast Los Angeles: communities and cost. A 710 tunnel would disrupt and destroy community life wherever it would be built, and ALL communities that find themselves in its possible path, have come out firmly against it, both through grassroots citizens’ groups, and official LA Neighborhood Councils. The cost of this tunnel, by a SCAG study (that was subsequently suppressed because, I believe, its findings weren’t to the liking of tunnel proponents,) is much greater than $5 billion, the largest failure # given by the PPP study. So, Messrs. Katz, Failing, Fasana, Fenton, Reed, and– Villaraigosa, stop wasting taxpayers’ money- and our time– MOVE ON to another project. You will not win this fight, but you will win something else: discredit to your judgement, if you continue to propose this boondoggle of a tunnel.

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