From the blog "I Will Ride": Is There a Gold Line at the End of the 710 Tunnel?

Link: Is There a Gold Line at the End of the 710 Tunnel? « I Will Ride Blog

Is There a Gold Line at the End of the 710 Tunnel?
Posted by Albert

The Glendale News Press ran an article June 19 on the dilemma the proposed Long Beach 710 freeway tunnel has posed for two elected officials in Glendale and La Cañada Flintridge. A discussion of the merits of the 710 extension is quite out of our jurisdiction here at I Will Ride, so you might be wondering how is this related to the Gold Line Foothill Extension? We’ll get to that in a moment.

As a councilmember for the City of La Cañada Flintridge, Dave Spence opposes the prospect of the 710 extension bringing more traffic toward the neighborhoods in his city. The same can be said for Glendale City Councilman Ara Najarian, who opposes the project on the same grounds. However, Spence is also a member of the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments, and the COG’s board supports the 710 extension. Meanwhile, Najarian – a name you might have seen quite frequently if you followed our live coverage of the Metro meetings @iwillride on Twitter – is a member of the Metro Board of Directors. On July 1, he will likely take over as chairman of the Metro Board, a body that controls funding over the 710 project, which is expected to cost several billion dollars.

That’s the dilemma. What’s their solution? Well, according to the News Press, it’s the Gold Line:

“Even so, Spence and other officials, including Najarian, say the money [proposed for the 710] could be better spent on rail transit, such as the continuation of the Gold Line [Foothill Extension] from Pasadena.

“‘If the money proposed for the tunnel were made available for the Gold Line [Foothill Extension] it would get people off the freeway by 2013, that’s a much better solution,’ [Spece] said, adding, ‘It just doesn’t make sense to spend that amount of money to get level-F results.’”

Sounds good.