Starting next week, Metro will host a series of community meetings on its plan to widen the 605 Freeway, plus connecting Freeways: the 5, 10, 60 and 105. See full meeting schedule at the bottom of this post.
In 2020 Metro and Caltrans announced that they would demolish more than 300 homes for its $5+ billion 605 Corridor Improvements Project. Metro had planned to take out homes, apartment buildings, businesses, and portions of a school and a park in working class Latino neighborhoods mostly along the 5 Freeway in the cities of Downey and Santa Fe Springs.
Community resistance led the Metro board to pause the project in late 2020, directing staff to come up with less destructive alternatives.
In 2023, Metro staff announced that the 605 expansion plan had been retooled and no longer included residential demolitions. Metro is also now stating that the project will to include multimodal components, though specifics are scant.
Metro recently went live with a storymap website sharing some further information about the 605CIP project. That site includes various freeway cross-sections comparing existing conditions to proposed widening.
It's 2024, an existential climate crisis is scorching Southern California - with much of the west, and indeed the world, experiencing record temperatures. And Metro and Caltrans are widening freeways throughout L.A. County, and planning more of the same.
Below is the 605 Corridor Improvement Project meeting schedule.
- Tuesday 7/9 from 6-8 p.m. at The Arc, Reagan Banquet Room, 9545 Washburn Road in Downey - details
- Wednesday 7/10 from 6-8 p.m. at Pico Rivera Golf Course, 3260 Fairway Drive in Pico Rivera - details
- Thursday 7/11 from 5:30-7:30pm at Lambert Park Auditorium, 11431 McGirk Avenue in El Monte - details
- Tuesday 7/16 from 12-1:30 p.m. virtual meeting online - details
- Thursday, 7/18 from 6-8 p.m. at Cerritos College Fine Arts Building, Room 134, 11110 Alondra Boulevard in Norwalk - details
