By The FirstPlans to expand the 710 Freeway in Los Angeles have been canceled due to opposition claiming the emissions would have negatively affected minority populations. That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it —despite trucks idling due to congestion create a lot of pollution, as well.
From the Los Angeles Times…
The freeway and the working-class communities’ ills became a potent symbol of a larger effort playing out across the state: to stop freeways that shape, divide and hurtneighborhoods, especially those where people of color live. The Times found that more than 200,000 people nationwide have lost their homes because of federal road projects over three decades. The largest recent highway expansions, including in California, have forced out residents in Black and Latino neighborhoods at a disproportionately high rate.
Black and Latino residents make up an estimated 83% of the 1.2 million people who live along the 710 corridor. They endure some of the worst air quality in the country. The area accounts for about 20% of all particulate emissions in Southern California, according to [the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority].
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The 710 Freeway is the main artery for the nation’s largest port complex, through which nearly a third of the nation’s imported goods move. Big rigs carrying a crush of goods — as varied as electronics, auto parts and shoes — often clog the road. Activistscall it the diesel death zone, but Americans with their appetite for click-shopping, have come to rely on the web of warehouses and deliveries that the port is built around.
Canceling a freeway expansion that would create easier transport to and from a major port complex during a security chain crisis —because of racism — is peak Biden Administration nonsense.
One Twitter user shared the story, saying “We are living in a clown world.”
