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Interstate 710 (I-710), mostly named the Long Beach Freeway (and refered to by locals as The Seven-Ten), is a freeway running for 23 miles (37 km) in a north-south direction through Los Angeles County, California, United States. For most of its route, it follows the course of the Los Angeles River, rarely wandering more than a few hundred feet from the riverbed.
Interstate 710
Route description
History
South Pasadena
Reconstruction
Control cities
Exit list
| | Type | Interstate | | Route | 710 | | Length Mi | 23
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Route description
Until November 18, 1954 the freeway was called the Los Angeles River Freeway.
The road presently signed as Interstate 710 runs from Ocean Boulevard west of downtown Long Beach north to Valley Boulevard (just north of Interstate 10) in Alhambra, just east of the Los Angeles community of El Sereno.
A short unsigned freeway stub exists in Pasadena, heading south from the interchange of Interstate 210 and State Route 134 to California Boulevard. The section in between has not been built. Only the section from SR 1 north to Interstate 5 is officially the Long Beach Freeway.
The original plans for that section ran parallel to Atlantic Boulevard in Alhambra and Los Robles Avenue in San Marino and Pasadena. Opposition to this route by Alhambra and San Marino resulted in a routing that skirted Alhambra to the west and bisected South Pasadena. Subsequent opposition to the rerouted project by residents of South Pasadena and the Los Angeles district of El Sereno, and the resulting litigation, have prevented Caltrans from completing the northernmost leg of the route. The freeway's northern terminus has therefore been Valley Boulevard on the border between the East Los Angeles and San Gabriel Valley regions since the 1960s.
As a result of the route's incomplete condition, freeway signs are inconsistent in their identification of the northbound Long Beach Freeway's destination, with some indicating Pasadena as a control city and others identifying Valley Boulevard as the freeway's terminus. For example, approaching Interstate 710 from State Route 60 (Pomona Freeway) in East Los Angeles, westbound traffic is given Valley Boulevard as the destination for the northbound Long Beach Freeway, while eastbound traffic is given a destination of Pasadena. Even signs at the interchange between Interstate 710 and Interstate 105 (Glenn Anderson Freeway), completed in 1993, show Pasadena as the destination for the northbound Long Beach Freeway. This suggests that Caltrans still fully expected to extend Interstate 710 to Pasadena at that time, over a decade since the original proposals for the route through South Pasadena were defeated. Currently, traffic headed for Pasadena on Interstate 710 is redirected to Interstate 10 (San Bernardino Freeway) eastbound by signs at the interchange between the two routes in Monterey Park. These signs identify both Pasadena and San Bernardino as control cities for the eastbound San Bernardino Freeway, although it does not actually pass through Pasadena. Rather, traffic destined for the city is directed to take State Route 19 (Rosemead Boulevard) northbound from its junction with Interstate 10 (about 6 miles east of the Long Beach Freeway) to reach Pasadena.
In reality, most traffic is forced onto Fremont Avenue in Alhambra and South Pasadena and (from the north at least) the old Pasadena Freeway (SR 110).
The failure to complete the Long Beach Freeway has contributed to traffic congestion in northeastern Los Angeles and the northwestern San Gabriel Valley, as there are no north-south freeways in the heavily populated area between Interstate 5 (Golden State Freeway) and Interstate 605 (San Gabriel River Freeway). Pro- and anti-710 lobbies have debated whether finishing I-710 would alleviate any of the San Gabriel Valley's congestion, or merely displace it from surface streets to the freeway.
If compleated, the Long Beach Freeway and the Foothill Freeway (Interstate 210) would form a continuous route around Los Angeles from Long Beach northwards through Pasadena, beyond the Verdugo Mountains via the Cresenta Valley, across the sparsly populated hills in Sunland-Tujunga and finally joining Interstate 5 at Newhall Pass at the northern end of the San Fernando Valley. Interstate 210 from Newhall Pass to Pasadena was expanded to eight lanes in anticipation of this, despite the fact that the areas it passes through are so lightly developed.
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History
Legislative Route 167 was defined in 1933 to run from San Pedro east to Long Beach and north to Monterey Park.
The section from SR 1 south and west to SR 47 was re-added to the legislative definition at some point. The existing freeway from SR 1 south to Ocean Boulevard was taken over by the state on August 25, 2000 in a trade with the City of Long Beach for former State Route 103 north of SR 1. The rest of the defined route, west on Ocean Boulevard to SR 47, is still locally maintained.
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South Pasadena
Currently, Caltrans is researching the possibility of using advanced tunneling technologies to build the Long Beach Freeway under South Pasadena without disturbing the residential neighborhoods on the surface; such technologies have been used to build freeways through similarly sensitive cities like Versailles in France. South Pasadena's government has grudgingly conceded that it may assent to such a project. However, it is unclear whether this option would be financially feasible, owing to the state budget crisis of the early 21st century. Caltrans has indicated that the South Pasadena real estate that it owns along the original 710 right-of-way, which has appreciated several hundred percent in real terms since its acquisition in the mid-1960s, would currently command a sufficiently high price to pay for the state's share of the tunnel. However, the vulnerability of such an ambitious structure to earthquakes and terrorism, and the resultingly high cost of insuring against such mishaps, might still preclude the tunnel's construction. One option would be to congestion price the tunnel, which given the amount of traffic congestion in Southern California would increase the feasibility of building the tunnel. *
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Reconstruction
The explosive growth of cargo volumes handled at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach has added an enormous amount of truck traffic to the Long Beach Freeway, since it is the most direct route between the port complex and the railyards in Vernon and East Los Angeles, as well as the Pomona and San Bernardino freeways that connect Los Angeles to railyards in San Bernardino and Colton. The freeway's pavement has been badly damaged as a result, as it was not designed to carry nearly as large of a load of truck traffic. It has also become a major source of air pollution, emanating from diesel-fueled trucks idling in rush hour traffic congestion and giving cities along its route some of the worst air quality in already smoggy Southern California. In response to these developments, Caltrans and the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority have called for a radical expansion of the segment of the freeway between the San Diego and Pomona Freeways. It would include dedicated truck lanes, elevated carpool lanes similar to those on the Harbor Freeway (I-110), and up to 10 lanes for general traffic. By using existing right-of-way along the Los Angeles River, very few homes would need to be taken by eminent domain. (Initial plans for the construction called for the condemnation of nearly a thousand residences, drawing fierce opposition from local governments and community activists along the route.) Groundbreaking on the ambitious new freeway, which would be one of the world's most advanced, is pending allocation of federal transportation funds.
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Control cities
Northbound
Southbound
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Exit list
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