Just weeks after throwing its support behind a controversial 710 Freeway tunnel, the San Gabriel Valley Council of Governments removed tunnel funding from a transportation priority list that could become part of a half-cent sales tax ballot measure in November 2016.
A $3.3-billion transportation funding list was submitted by the SGVCOG to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) Monday, shortly after the board accepted a request from the pro-tunnel coalition to remove $105 million in funding for a 4.9-mile underground tunnel between Alhambra and Pasadena.
Alhambra City Councilwoman Barbara Messina, a SGVCOG representative and one of the leaders of the 710 Coalition, asked that the monies be used for other highway and transit projects in the San Gabriel Valley. The money was then transferred to a line item supporting construction of a Gold Line Eastside extension from East Los Angeles to South El Monte or Whittier or both, said Fran Delach, SGVCOG interim executive director.
With the extra money, plus other funding shifts, that SGVCOG bumped its request to Metro for the Gold Line Eastside up from $246 million to $543 million, Delach said.
Perhaps the gesture was an olive branch after an extremely contentious vote of 16-7 to support building a tunnel, which would cost between $3 billion and $5 billion, some say. The vote was called premature and divisive by tunnel opponents on the SGVCOG, namely representatives from Pasadena, South Pasadena, Sierra Madre and La Cañada Flintridge.
Messina said she didn’t want the controversial project to turn off voters. Also, she said the amount is small compared to a $5 billion dual-bore tunnel project. If the tunnel is approved by Metro, most of the funding will come from private investors, part of a public-private partnership, she said. Tolls would recover the capital cost.
Messina said part of the decision to forfeit funding from a future sales tax measure was made after talking to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, president of the Metro board, who indicated to her that he did not like confrontation. Metro will be deciding on the language of the ballot measure and has asked all the regional councils of governments to submit project lists by Sept. 1.
“I told him we don’t want to be part of your sales tax measure,” she said. “It wasn’t worth it to us.”
The Beyond the 710 group, made up of cities and others opposed to the tunnel project, has used the delisting as a victory. The group sent out a press release Monday saying exclusion from the SGVCOG’s list of projects “makes it highly unlikely that the tunnel will be on the final county-wide project list.”
Beyond the 710 said the real reason Messina asked the SGVCOG to remove funding was not to doom the measure to failure. The group has asked Metro to consider other options, including light rail, bikeways and a widened street leading from the south end of the 710.
“The SGVCOG’s action confirms what we’ve always known. The tunnel project is deeply flawed, politically unpopular, and presents so many environmental, health, legal, engineering, and economic concerns that it cannot be funded, let alone actually built,” said Pasadena Mayor Terry Tornek in a statement.
