Communities living along one of our country’s most important international trade corridors—the 710 freeway—know all too well what they are living next to. The never ending truck traffic, noisy and dirty rail yards, high rates of asthma and other diseases caused by air pollution; this is the norm for the communities living along the 710 freeway in Los Angeles.
KCET, the country’s largest independent public television station, recently launched a new page on their website to share information and stories about this important yet often overlooked corridor.
This new web page is very timely, as it can provide a new venue for the ongoing debate over proposals to expand and change the 710 freeway. The 710 is a key truck route between Southern California’s two major ports, the Port of Los Angeles and the Port of Long Beach, and rail yards and warehouses in downtown LA and beyond. State and local transportation agencies have been proposing to expand the 710 to make room for even more trucks. A coalition of community and environmental organizations, called the Coalition for Environmental Health and Justice (CEHAJ), of which NRDC is a member, put together an alternative proposal, that would create separated truck lanes for cleaner trucks (namely trucks that emit little to no diesel pollution), improve the adjacent LA River, and improve a pedestrian and bike trail network.
What happens to the 710 freeway is a national issue because of the importance of this one link in international trade and the huge bill to taxpayers to pay for upgrading this infrastructure. It is also a very local issue because of the harmful impacts on local communities. This new KCET web page can provide a forum to learn about and discuss this critical corridor.