A weak attack launched in an LA Times Op-Ed by James Moore calling for completion of the tunnel was no match for the conviction of Michael Dieden, whose “Blowback: I-710 Tunnel such a 1950s idea” a week later cited the Gold Line and its advantages for the revitalized neighborhoods that have steadfastly opposed the 710:

If it were not for ordinary citizens, led by South Pasadena residents, the historic neighborhoods in Pasadena, South Pasadena and Alhambra would be wiped out today. Instead, these cities are now served by the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Gold Line light rail. Their neighborhoods are not only intact, but have matured into some of the most desirable in Southern California. In addition, around the Gold Line’s stations, new transit-oriented neighborhoods have sprouted. Such developments offer housing opportunities in walkable neighborhoods to families that can forgo an automobile and save $10,000 annually for the cost of owning a car, allowing for a more productive use of hard-earned income for college accounts, family vacations and emergency family needs.

The example was a clear rebuke both to Moore’s arguments and to his longstanding opposition to light rail transportation alternatives.

Moore’s “points for moving ahead” are all desperate measures: Keep the federal government out of the project. (And shift the entire $10+ billion burden to California taxpayers, already facing a worsening budget crisis?) Accelerate environmental review (A six-mile freeway tunnel under urban Los Angeles with rushed environmental review???) Include a limited list of cities in a joint powers authority but exclude everyone not immediately adjacent (Isn’t this a major regional transportation initiative?) Invite a public private partnership to create a toll scheme (Nobody knows if this could be profitable or not, and many completed projects haven’t shown a good return. Moore starts by retreating here: “Costs cannot be carefully estimated until the tunnel is designed, but even rough calculations show that tolls would give private-sector partners a competitive return on investment.”) With these as starting points, the better part of valor would be to surrender and stop trying to build the freeway.

Building the I-710 tunnel under South Pasadena, Letters to the LA Times, August 2, 2011, also responded to Moore’s editorial. Excerpts:

California’s transportation planners need to start looking forward and design rail to transport trucks and goods and to develop a variety of public transit opportunities for commuters. Only then will we find relief.

Looking ahead, what does a healthy Los Angeles in 20 years look like? More freeways, congestion, pollution and disruption? Or more social interaction, recreation, working at home, parks and a richer quality of life?

Moore also published With the Carmageddon Fresh in Our Minds, Why We Must Finish Another Vital L.A. Artery, Engineering News-Record, July 25, 2011. Excerpts:

A small but highly organized, vocal group delayed the project by learning exactly where to insert monkey wrenches into the gears of public process. They made the project appear controversial; but the freeway system cannot function as it should with this gap, hence the final link is going forward.

…since the federal government can no longer pay for new highways or fix the old highways, we must shift our focus from government funding to private capital. Private companies will build new roads in exchange for the trip tolls that will provide investors a profit.

The final link isn’t going forward. Advance is blocked by a Federal Injunction against the project. Complaining about a “highly organized, vocal group” sounds like battle fatigue and growing frustration with the rules of engagement. Further, where is there any justification for the belief that private industry will tailor a public project to serve long-term public interests? Our financial and market system doesn’t reward that kind of altruism.

Earlier rounds in this summer battle series seized on Carmageddon as a justification for completing the 710. These were also soundly defeated.

Freeways are not the answer, Letter to the Glendale News-Press, July 25, 2011, answered an earlier letter by 710 Freeway Coalition Chair Nat Read claiming that Carmageddon-like conditions exist every day on the 5, 2 and 134 freeways because of the 710 gap.

Opinion: the 405 closure as a case for multi-modal transportation in L.A., Metro: The Source, June 17, 2011, argues that:

In our multi-cultural, multi-lingual, multi-faceted city we’ve left the “multi” prefix off of one very important element: our transportation system.

We trapped ourselves in single mode city and suffer the consequences each and every day, whether it be from our daily car-tastrophes (traffic, accidents, road rage) to our occasional carmageddons.

…Hopefully any pain caused by July’s 405 closure will only serve as an incentive to continue to support the non-highway projects that will finally turn L.A. into a multi-modal city.

Print fronts in this series of summer battles include a Business Life Magazine editorial by Nat Read, which called the project “the last remaining gap in the basic core of Los Angeles County,” and a Pasadena Review rebuttal by Janet Dodson on behalf of the No 710 Action Committee, siting other freeway concepts abandoned since the 1958 Master Plan of Freeways. Dodson goes on:

Communities across the region from Glendale to Los Angeles to Commerce have declared their opposition to this tunnel. They all understand the economic and environmental dangers in the proposal. No one has been able to figure out what the advantage to the toll tunnels could possibly be, except to the individuals who see potential massive profit for themselves as the expense of the population and the tax base. The tunnels will increase pollution, they will be dangerous, and will also cost untold billions…

In this 21st Century, we have the special opportunity to offer greener, more forward-thinking concepts to modernize our crucial ports and transportation systems. Here in the land where freeways first flowered, we should advance to the next step, leaving the century-old concepts behind in the dust.

Tunnel project opponents have been following developments, trying at every turn to stop the project before it becomes “shovel-ready.” As Sierra Madre blog The Tattler puts it:

A word you hear a lot of these days is “process.” The concept of “process” is usually trotted out when something particularly unpopular is being marketed to a hostile public…What this is really all about is holding off a skeptical public long enough to get the planning and set-up in place, then allowing the citizens to have their say, but only after everything is pretty much shovel ready. The ensuing pitch being that since everything is ready to go, and it really is such a wonderful plan that involved vast sums of money and a whole lot of time to create, why would you ever want to stop it now? Killing off an unpopular planning initiative is always easier in the early stages then it is after there is something tangible and complete to market to the citizens.

And nowhere is the “process” more evident than in that slowly creeping inevitability known as the 710 Freeway Tunnel. This boondoggle (present cost estimate $3.73 billion), would close the gap between the Foothill (210) and Long Beach (710) freeways. The years of successful opposition in South Pasadena to the completion of this project having literally driven it underground.

The Tattler’s full post, under the Sunroom Desk paperweight, considers transit-oriented development policy and the contradictions of a 21st century freeway tunnel as an answer to regional gridlock, even within the constituency promoting it. Another excerpt:

Since one of the Sacramento mandated goals of SCAG is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the San Gabriel Valley through the building of high-density housing, which will supposedly cut down on automobile traffic, it seems odd that they would also be advocating the creation of a tunnel that would undo any of the purported good effects of all that development. A bit of a contradiction, as it were.

A few links focus on state and national politics, most report on local news and intrigue, and some explain intersections of the two (as this blog attempts to do with wireless broadband policies). The expanded list was put off for months as research on cell siting took priority.

Determined to cover other subjects toward the end of the year, I attended a meeting on California’s SB 375, along with an overflow crowd of SCAG members, local government staff, contractors, and consultants. The Liveable Communities Strategy sounds on paper like a positive change in direction for our “automobile-centric”, gridlocked region.

But Michael Antonovich made critical comments at the meeting, and follow-up research led me to the Sierra Madre Tattler, whose editor is a strong critic of the legislation. Sunroom Desk’s sidebar link expansion commenced, with an emphasis on more local voices.

SB 375 is an outgrowth of AB 32, which the Wall Street Journal just reported may be shelved if a November 2010 state proposition passes. Both laws aim to reduce greenhouse gases: AB 32 by switching to renewable energy sources, and SB 375 by dictating “smart growth” high-density development near transit centers.

Is high-density, transit-oriented housing the answer for every community? Antonovich expresses doubt, as his district is the largest but lowest-density portion of LA County, while the Tattler presents the legislation as a Sacramento plot to achieve central planning control over charming suburban communities like Sierra Madre and create business for high-rise developers throughout the state. In recent posts, the editor raps SCAG, questions its population growth projections (on which regional housing needs are based), and ridicules the assumptions of policymakers regarding the desirability of individual v. public transit for high-density housing occupants. Here is a sampling, from December 2009 through this Monday:

Mayor MacGillivray’s Message on the Recent SCAG (and GLUE?) Dog and Pony Show Excerpt: “To better help the public understand the intense pressures small cities like ours are under to accommodate Sacramento’s demands for extremely high levels of new and undesirable development…”

Will AB 32/SB 375 Even Happen?

Our Current RHNA Numbers Are Based on Criteria SCAG No Longer Supports? Excerpt: “the problem is California’s population is now actually declining…Since vast hordes of new residents are not on the way, the now operative message is we need to build large quantities of new housing here to stop – get this – Global Warming. You got it, big condo complexes are going to save humanity from extinction.”

Bart (Hearts) the Shenanigan Shuttle Excerpt: “As an aside, has it ever occurred to anyone that low income housing might actually cause more people to own automobiles rather than less? If people of a certain income bracket could pay less money for housing, wouldn’t that free up some of their income to get the one thing they’ve always wanted? That being a car?”

Laurie Barlow: Acronym Minefield Provides Cover for Sacramento’s Regional Control

An Outraged Environmentalist Writes In

Some People Have a Real Problem with Cars

California Planning & Development Report: The SB 375 Backlash Will Start to Hit (in 2010)

Former governors Gray Davis and Pete Wilson, Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols, and an overflow crowd of local officials and business leaders gathered Thursday in Los Angeles to discuss implementing California’s Sustainable Communities Strategy (SB375). This landmark legislation, the first in the nation, requires local governments to use greenhouse gas reduction targets in developing local housing, transportation, and community plans.

Takeaways from the session:

Local leaders are determined to emphasize sustainability, quality of life, and cutting pollution in regional planning, even if climate change science comes into serious doubt.

Creating incentives for smart growth is going to be very difficult during this economic downturn, as the state has defunded transit and taken city redevelopment funds.

Existing land use planning and revenue structures run counter to the goals of smart growth and sustainability.

Flexibility in state rules for implementing cuts in greenhouse gases will be critical for inland and suburban communities that cannot replicate Northern California building and transit use patterns. “Clean up” language is needed in the legislation.

Don’t underestimate market forces – people will find ways around laws they don’t agree with.

Educating voters (“we need to deputize every Californian”) on this legislation and being sensitive to their economic concerns at this time is paramount.

Yesterday’s meeting was the culmination of several background meetings over the past several months. It brought together the regional council of the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), the Southern California Leadership Council, and the Global Land Use and Economic Council, a business coalition.

Remarks made during the proceedings:

“The overflow crowd indicates the scope of collaboration the region will need to implement this landmark legislation…The success of implementation will be based on flexibility.” – Jon Edney, SCAG President

“If we are going to discourage autos, we have to increase funding for transit…cities have to have money for redevelopment…we need to get revenue structures in line with SB 375.” – Governor Gray Davis

“…new home building and mortgage problems are making things difficult…high-rise condos aren’t working out financially for developers.” – Greg McWilliams, Chair, Global Land Use and Economic Development

“Be careful when the science is under attack. Our science needs to be beyond the pale – people are looking to California as a leader in this effort. We need to be sure that the science is there, for example, that greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by high-rise development.” – Lucy Dunn, President and CEO, Orange County Business Council

“Government should be required to take a Hippocratic oath (’First, do no harm’). Be damn careful about undertaking major changes unless you are absolutely sure they are going to make things better…It is difficult enough to create jobs in this economic climate and if we don’t reverse this, local and state government will be without revenue to do even basic things.” – Governor Pete Wilson

“It’s great to talk about Northern California type transit-oriented development, but in most areas here we can only do transit-ready development..SB 375 cannot be about greenhouse gases, it is about housing a growing population and providing jobs while we reduce greenhouse gases.” – Greg Devereaux, Ontario City Manager

“One size doesn’t fit all. The north Los Angeles County district is larger than the other four districts put together, but isn’t getting a fair share of transit funds…Structural reform is needed; not always more funds, but better distribution of funds.” – Mike Antonovich, LA County Supervisor, 5th District

“There are no representatives from school systems here…schools need to be part of this dialogue.” – Sharon Quirk-Silva, Fullerton Council member

“California can’t lose its ability to remain aspirational in tough times. I happen to believe in SB 375 and AB32…I want a toolkit and rules of engagement…whether or not the science is there, land-use planning has not worked out well for the state.” - Beth Krom, Irvine Council member

“The phrases repeated today are what we call ‘co-benefits’ – everything we do has to achieve multiple benefits: cleaning air, reducing gridlock, making communities healthier, and motivating smart growth.” – Mary Nichols, Chair, California Air Resources Board