Assistant Secretary of US Transportation Visits Pasadena, Given Helicopter Flyover of 710 Freeway Stub

Assistant Secretary of Transportation for Transportation Policy Christopher A. Coes visited Pasadena Friday and met with federal, state, county and city officials at City Hall before being flown over the 710 freeway stub and nearby neighborhoods.

He was accompanied in a Pasadena police helicopter by Pasadena Mayor Victor Gordo and City Manager Miguel Márquez during the flyover.

Coes’ visit comes after Pasadena was awarded a $2 million grant through the US Department of Transportation’s Federal Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program to help fund studies that will lead a community-driven process to plan for the future of the 710 stub area.

Coes came to Pasadena to learn more about the City’s plans to re-envision the  710 stub, according to a City official.

The stub was recently deeded back to the City by the State of California after decades of being in limbo while Caltrans pursued efforts to complete the northern leg of the 710 Long Beach Freeway, possibly using the site.  The land itself was acquired by Caltrans primarily through eminent domain, which displaced businesses and hundreds of local residents.

Coes has pointed to past transportation projects that caused forced displacement like that which occurred in connection with the 710 stub area as being prime opportunities for the Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program

 “That’s why reconnecting communities is so important,” Coes said in 2022. “Because we know for the last 50 to 60 years, the way we’ve invested transportation dollars, the way we’ve aligned transportation dollars with land use, in many cases, was sometimes not in the benefit of the full community—and sometimes it’s actually been in direct opposition to neighborhoods.”

The Federal Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program is a program by the US Department of Transportation that provides funding to remove, retrofit, or mitigate transportation facilities such as highways and rail lines that create mobility, access, or economic barriers to community connectivity through capital construction, planning, and technical assistance1. It is the first-ever Federal program dedicated to reconnecting communities previously cut off from economic opportunities by transportation infrastructure.

The program is funded with $1 billion over the next five years. Funding supports planning grants, capital construction grants, and technical assistance to restore community connectivity through the removal, retrofit, mitigation, or replacement of eligible transportation infrastructure facilities.

Eligible applicants for planning grants include state, local, and federally recognized Tribal governments, metropolitan planning organizations, and nonprofits. 

Funded planning activities include public engagement activities, planning/feasibility studies, engineering, traffic studies, capacity measurements, roadway design, environmental review, impact surveys (e.g., community, mobility, health, economy, workforce, culture), safety evaluations and cost estimations.