The 710 Freeway Gap Closure is a project that many people think they understand, but unless they have tracked the process closely --- they may be surprised. The City of South Pasadena and other project opponents have been quite successful in conjuring up a picture of environmental and community destruction. Their campaign of misinformation and deliberate omission is designed to undermine the political and popular support for the freeway by creating a false impression that this Project is not needed or wanted. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

This Website is intended to address the war of misinformation, distortion and outright false claims made by a small but intensely committed group of 710 Freeway opponents. This group composed primarily of South Pasadena residents, operates from the premise that their South Pasadena's interests outweigh staggering impacts, traffic congestion and pollution that their City forces upon residents of other Southern California cities. In essence, their message is that it is OK to subject others to vehicles and air pollution because "our community" is a "more special place" than all others.

In pursuit of this unspoken set of beliefs, the City of South Pasadena and its supporters have tried to slow the 710 Freeway Gap Closure by a series of lawsuits. The existence of the lawsuits creates an incorrect impression that the project has not advanced toward construction. While the debate over whether to complete the freeway spanned decades, the life of the fully mitigated 710 Freeway Gap Project dates only from its conditional approval, by the federal government in April, 1998. Today the project has been well defined, a route has been selected, extraordinary mitigation has been identified to reduce the impact upon affected communities, and the Federal Government has defined a final environmental planning process that will lead to a geen light for construction.

The 710 Freeway Gap Closure is a project whose time has come despite the continuing opposition of a few vocal freeway foes centered in the City of South Pasadena. Contrary to their claims of community, historical, and environmental devastation, the City of South Pasadena will be less impacted by the construction of this freeway segment than any other freeway community in the history of Southern California. For elected officials and other policy makers in Southern California, the question comes down to whether the overwhelming needs of the region will be ignored to placate a small but vocal group in South Pasadena.

For decades there has been a disturbing consistency in the actions of the City of South Pasadena. Each of these actions has been designed either to shift the freeway route onto other communities living to the south and west of South Pasadena, or to prevent construction of the freeway and to continue the long-term dumping of tens of thousands of cars into the nearby communities.

Particularly offensive has been the use of historic preservation laws as a shield to development of the 710 Freeway. Each time the state shifted the location of the freeway route, the City of South Pasadena and its litigation attorneys nominated more homes and districts for historic status. The arguments for historic significance became more and more imaginative until even the Keeper of the Register of Historic Places rejected these nominations as without merit. It is important to note that only one historic property in South Pasadena may be lost in building the 710 Freeway. The historic resources in the 710 corridor are important to preserve, but they cannot be a pretense to impose South Pasadena’s NIMBYism upon the people of Southern California.

Today, the Revised 710 Freeway Gap Closure project includes hundreds of millions of dollars of mitigation to protect the people, the cities, and the historic resources of the 710 corridor. The 710 Freeway foes have greatly benefited because they will now be substantially protected.

There is an overwhelming regional, state and federal consensus that the 710 Freeway must be built. All elected officials and public decision makers should now work together to carry the regional consensus on the 710 Freeway to reality.

This Website tells the story of the 710 Project. It is time for the people and policy makers of Southern California to know the facts about the 710 Freeway Gap Closure Project.