710 Freeway will take 100,000 cars off of city streets in Pasadena, South Pasadena, El Sereno, and Alhambra.

That is an estimate by Caltrans in their EIR which is not based on the current configuration of the freeway, nor is it based on any study of the origin and destination of the traffic actually using the corridor.  The City of Pasadena was the first to actually study the composition of the corridor traffic.  They commissioned Meyer-Mohaddes Associates to conduct an origin/destination (license plate matching) survey of the traffic from the 710 stub in Pasadena to the 710 stub in Northeast Los Angeles at Valley Blvd.  Only 25% of the traffic is using the corridor to travel from 710 stub to 710 stub.  Thirty percent is bound for the 110 (Pasadena) Freeway, and the remaining 45% is made up of local trips not bound for any freeway.  Since the 710 will not connect to the 110, this means that 75% of the traffic that currently uses our neighborhood streets will still do so if the 710 is built.  Add to that the fact that Caltrans' EIR states that 109,000 vehicles will be attracted from other freeways in the region (traffic that currently doesn't use the corridor), we are left to conclude that the 710 will do nothing to improve our city's traffic circulation and in fact many traffic engineers predict that our streets will be more congested due to the likely "spillover" traffic from the grid locked freeway and 210/134/710 interchange.  Why should we build an 8-lane freeway that destroys three communities and costs $2 billion for a minority of traffic (the 25%) when we can do all manner of improvements to other corridors to handle those 210 to 10 trips?  For instance, Rosemead Blvd, which is as wide as a freeway and is owned by Caltrans (it was once proposed as a freeway in 1965), offers tremendous potential for capacity improvement.

That is based on a traffic engineering "rule of thumb" that says, for every mile of freeway built, you save one life. It has nothing to do with what is actually happening in our corridor. They do not provide any baseline documentation to show how the freeway will improve safety. But we do.  For example, in the last year available, 1997, California Highway Patrol data shows that there were 13 traffic fatalities in Pasadena; three of them were on the freeway, and the other ten were all east of Lake Ave.  Furthermore, a new study of highway and road improvements in all 50 states concluded overwhelmingly that new highways do not decrease deaths or accidents, and that the reduction in fatalities overall is attributed to building safer cars.

The 710 Freeway is needed in order to meet air quality conformance guidelines in our Regional Transportation Plan, and without it, the EPA will halt all federal transportation funding to our region.

The EPA has publicly stated that this is false, and that in fact, the 710 might jeopardize air quality conformance. Furthermore, the only organizations who sue the Federal Government to halt all transportation funding to a region based on air quality conformity guidelines are Coalition for Clean Air, Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club, AND THEY OPPOSE THE FREEWAY!

More than two-thirds of the freeways planned for the region were not built. The 710 Freeway is an outdated remnant of freeway plans made more than 50 years ago. It will add less than one percent capacity to the regional freeway network at a cost of more than $2 billion - and only increases travel speed in the corridor by one mile per hour, per Caltrans' own studies.

Why of course it should. Anytime you spend more than $2 billion of public funds, there will be job creation. Let's base transportation policy on transportation needs, not on who will make money and benefit from construction.

Alhambra's paid freeway lobbyist, Nat Read, who lives in Los Angeles, submitted the notice of intention to circulate  petitions to our city clerk. He paid a signature gathering firm over $40,000 to collect signatures from Pasadenans (and, by the way, many Pasadenans were told that if they wanted the freeway killed, they should sign the petition). The office address and phone number for "710 Freeway Now" is Mr. Read's office.