highway expansion

In a sadly misunderstood and ill-grounded editorial, the Press-Telegram endorsed Burlington Northern Santa Fe's (BNSF) proposed 153-acre railyard project west of the 710 freeway, the Southern California International Gateway (SCIG). The endorsement comes right before a public hearing featuring demonstrations from some 20 community organizations who will offer evidence denouncing the benefits of the project as well as proposals for a new site.

There were some fears that the second coming of “Carmageddon”, a full closure of the 405 between the I-10 and the I-101, might really bring the disastrous traffic jams that were imagined but never materialized the last time around. By all accounts, traffic was no worse this weekend in Santa Monica and the Westside than any typical sunning idyllic weekend. Sam Morrissey, City Traffic Engineer for the city of Santa Monica reported “Santa Monica calmer than a usual sunny Saturday. No real traffic impacts.” If UCLA's research last time was any indication, the air was dramatically cleaner.

Are you ready to be inspired?

Dr. Roberta Kato, MD, is a Pediatric Pulmonologist at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and an Environmental Health Ambassador with Physicians for Social Responsibility-LA.

Last week, Metro finished its most recent public meetings outlining twelve proposals to fill the so-called 4.5 mile "gap" on the I-710 between Alhambra and Pasadena at the I-210. The public response to the twelve alternatives presented was near-uniformly negative. Anger was particularly high at new proposals to connect the I-710 to the I-210 including, a tunnel connecting the 10 Freeway to the 134 Freeway, a surface route that would widen Avenue 64 and a highway route along Huntington Drive, Fair Oaks Avenue and Pasadena Avenue.

(There are two more meetings for the I-170 Expansion Project, tonight in Long Beach and tomorrow in Commerce. The Long Beach Post has the meeting details. If you can't make a meeting, you can email comments to 710eir@metro.net by August 29th.)

It's official: Carmageddon II is scheduled for the end of September from the evening of Friday, September 28 to the early morning of October 1.  As before, Metro is demolishing a portion of the Mulholland Bridge in part to make place for a carpool lane.  The full details of the closure can be found at any number of news sites, including Patch.

Today, my colleague Joe Maddela sent me a link to something he'd programmed called the Rampture Calculator. The Rampture Calculator attempts to estimate the number of days someone (commuters, residents, UCLA students) will be inconvenienced by the closure of an on or off ramp at Wilshire Boulevard to the 405.