The Metro Board of Directors voted today to end its efforts to widen the 710 Freeway and to use the $750 million allocated to that project instead for improvements to southeast Los Angeles communities along the freeway.
The virtual meeting, which will run from 5 to 7:30 p.m., will review the I-710 Corridor Project, which would add two lanes of truck traffic on either side of the freeway, and spans from Long Beach to East Los Angeles near the 60 Freeway.
The task force was set up to seek comment on the controversial I-710 Corridor Project, which involves adding two lanes of truck traffic to either side of the freeway from Long Beach to East Los Angeles near the 60 Freeway.
After plans were scuttled this spring on a controversial plan to widen the 710 Freeway, a new task force convened by Metro is seeking input from the public, particularly residents who will be directly impacted by the work.
A long-running project to widen the 710 Freeway hit a new hurdle after the EPA has required planners to conduct a detailed pollution study that is likely to show added truck traffic will increase pollution in an area already burdened by bad air.
The project, which is expected to take about 40 years to complete, is not expected to break ground until about 2022.
The plan to widen the 710 Freeway will likely take another step forward when the full Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority Board (Metro) votes Thursday morning.
The debate was between two alternatives identified by planners, one (5c) costing about $6 billion and “alternative 7” which would cost about $10 billion. Both projects would change the current layout of the current 19-mile stretch of the 710 that runs from Long Beach to East Los Angeles.
Long Beach has changed a lot over the last 60 years. It’s population has nearly doubled, the downtown skyline has changed dramatically and its port has grown into one of the busiest in the world.
