🚀 go-pugleaf

Grant Cooper wrote:
> In the end, I feel the question is: Are the benefits of completing 
> this freeway greater than the damage it will cause S. Pasadena?

Yes.

> There are alternatives to this, such as improving the way the 
> neigboring freeways handle traffic

What "neigboring freeways" are you talking about?  Presently, there is
no good way to get from Pasadena to Long Beach.

> getting people out of cars and into mass transit that works,

How?  At gunpoint?  Most people, myself included, prefer to drive.  Many
of us actually do drive more-or-less the same route that the 710 would
cover, and frankly I fail to see why South Pasadenans prefer to have
highly congested surface streets instead of one smoothly run freeway. 
For the vast majority, appeals to "mass transit that works" is a clever
way of saying "I want everyone else off the road so I won't have to sit
in traffic."

The only viable "alternative" is what we have now: an unfinished freeway
and unneccessary congestion on surface streets (and, if you are correct
that many people use other freeways instead, a dose of unnecessary
congestion there as well).

> An example is Laguna Beach. While the Coastal Freeway never made it, 
> another form, the San Joaquin Hills Toll Freeway (no, it's not an 
> oxymoron)

Actually, it is an oxymoron.  If you charge tolls, it's a turnpike or a
tollway, not a "freeway."  Not necessarily a bad idea, mind you, but
don't call it a "freeway."