Summary

The 710 Freeway opponents often decry the effects of construction on the neighborhoods within the freeway corridor. What the freeway opponents fail to disclose is the unprecedented level of mitigation measures that the Federal Government and Caltrans have committed to at the request of South Pasadena and other corridor communities.

The estimated value of all the mitigation measures now constitutes about 20% of the total construction cost of the 710 Gap Closure. Despite the higher construction costs, the 710 Freeway will confer such huge societal benefits that the extraordinary mitigation costs are justified.

The Details

Project opponents have pursued one strategy to slow down the project (See Chronology of Events). As a result, 27 different route alignments and variations have been examined over the life of the project. As different routes were under consideration, additional homes and tracts were nominated for historical status that were in the path of the routes under consideration. In the four historical resources surveys, hundreds of homes and districts were examined for potential historic status. Of the 110 historic structures finally identified, only 50 will be impacted by the freeway construction. Due to extraordinary efforts by Caltrans and the Federal Government, there are just 5 houses that cannot be saved from demolition. The remaining 45 affected structures will now be moved to other locations in the Historical District or will be stored off the right of way and then returned to a reconstructed street on top of 6 cut and cover tunnels to be constructed. The historical preservation activity is detailed in another section of this Website (Historic Preservation Summary).

The historic preservation mitigation is extraordinary and so is the additional mitigation agreed to by Caltrans and the Federal Government. Some have suggested that the Federal Government gave away too much to South Pasadena when it agreed to eliminate the freeway-to-freeway exchange with the Pasadena 110 Freeway and when it agreed to a ban of long-distance trucks. No other modern freeway in Southern California has been built subject to such concessions to communities affected by the construction. Nonetheless, this is part of the extremely generous mitigation South Pasadena and the project opponents have extracted from the government.

Despite how the government, indeed the entire region has bent over backwards to accommodate the demands of this vocal minority of project opponents, nothing short of project cancellation will ever seem to satisfy them.

What follows is a list of some of the most significant mitigation now promised for the 710 Gap Closure Project beyond all the normal construction mitigation measures imposed in prior environmental documents.

The mitigation for completing the 710 is unprecedented, but there is more. On the entire route there are special mitigations as well as mitigations in each community. Check out the details in the pages linked below and see for yourself.

• MITIGATION PROPOSED FOR ENTIRE PROJECT
• ALHAMBRA
• EL SERENO (City of Los Angeles)
• SOUTH PASADENA
• PASADENA