We took a family trip to the desert over the holiday weekend. The glorious new 210 took us all the way to the 10, thus avoiding much of the traffic typical of a 3-day weekend. One thing that struck me about the 210 as we zoomed through Rialto was the new sound walls. I started to wonder why all of these newer communities dotted with foreclosures have these mammoth, expensive sound walls and we don't. So I emailed planning and happened to bump into our State Assemblyman Anthony Portantino at Memorial Park (another great feature of living in La Canada...if you have questions, chances are you will bump into someone who has answers at the local market or the park). Between Mr. Portantino and Ann Wilson at the City of La Canada Flintridge, here is what I found out:
Basically, when the contracts were signed 30 years ago allowing the 210 to come through our town, we were not a city. We didn't have anyone at the helm negotiating on our behalf, so while sound walls were promised, nothing was put in writing. In legalese, I think that means we are screwed.
Three decades later, the city has hired a consultant and completed a sound wall study (the cost of the study was in excess of $500,000). Last year, the study was submitted to and approved by Caltrans. With the study, we are "project ready" and have an estimate of $30 million to complete the project. Based on the latest State budget, I think it is safe to say that we won't be getting help from Sacramento in the very near future. We also now have a federal lobbyist who this month will submit a request for Appropriations. Since we have been told that it is not possible to obtain funding for the whole project, we are applying for funding to potentially fund up to 2 sections (out of 27 sections) of the sound wall project. The amount of the request is 2.5 million.
According to Ann Wilson, "The City is using every available resource to obtain sound walls, and we hope, along with the residents, that we can resolve this important issue." Ann can be reached at awilson@lcf.ca.gov.
Hmmm...interesting. If the state is having issue funding the sound walls, why did they recently install on-ramp signals in such a low traffic area?
Posted by: LCFHF | March 04, 2008 at 01:24 PM