Motorists Compete For Space on New California Freeway (Fox News.com July 25, 2007)

BS Ranch Perspective

When you open a Freeway in Southern California, any Freeway in the Los Angeles Area, Its gonna get clogged...and clogged fast!!

BS Ranch

Motorists Compete for Space on New California Freeway

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

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RIALTO, Calif. —

The last stretch of brand-new freeway California is likely to see for many years opened Tuesday with motorists vying for position and the inevitable traffic jam.

Commuters clogged onramps to be among the first to burn rubber on State Route 210, a 7 1/4-mile ribbon completing a freeway that over decades pushed 80 miles east from Los Angeles through foothill towns along the San Gabriel Mountains. It now ties into cities and interstates in the growing region known as the Inland Empire.

As opening time approached, Jim Gary eased his aqua green 1997 Mustang into position while reporters swarmed and news helicopters thrummed overhead. He jockeyed for position with two women in a gray SUV who weren't shy about honking — and wound up second in line.

Suddenly, the cones were gone and Gary floored it. Music blaring, top down, he gunned past the SUV — which had stopped for a photo opportunity — and sped onto the freeway at 70 mph.

As his car glided under the first overpass, Gary honked the horn, gave a passenger a high-five and promptly started calling friends and relatives on his cell phone.

"Dude, watch the news tonight! Turn on the TV now! I'm the first on the freeway," he shouted, as a huge motorcycle passed him on the left.

Gary, a truck driver for a freight company, said he arrived at the ramp early and waited an hour to get in line.

"It paid off," he said, as he relived his moment of motoring glory. "It was a battle to see who was first. She was aggressive, but as soon as I saw the opening, I said, 'You go ahead and wave at the cameras. I'm going around you!"'

His back seat passenger, 20-year-old Tiana Colbert, shared his excitement.

"It was worth waking up for. Usually, I don't wake up for much," she said.

Officials say the freeway, first conceived in 1948, will likely be one of the last brand-new freeways to open for decades in California because of funding shortfalls and a lack of places to lay new pavement.

"We can go onto freeways and we can widen and modify and add lanes, but those freeways already exist," said Shelli Lombardo, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Transportation. "This is a brand-new freeway and you're not going to see another one of those for a substantial number of years in California."

Some people showed up two hours ahead of the opening to check out the virgin pavement.

A radio station promoted the opening all morning and played a skit featuring a grumpy and jealous Interstate 10, which lies to the south and runs parallel to the 210. It is expected to lose some traffic to the new route.

"It's outstanding," said Judy Roberts, 64, who showed up to watch the freeway open. "Cars are a way of life in California — you live in your car and this will make a lot of difference to a lot of people."

Ken Humphrey, 44, was first to arrive at the overpass that the first cars on the freeway would later drive under. He commutes more than an hour each way from Rialto to his job in the Van Nuys area of Los Angeles, and he said the new freeway would shave at least 15 minutes off his daily drive — each way.

"Now I'm just three blocks from this onramp. This is excellent. We've been waiting for this for a long time," he said.

When a previous 20-mile stretch of the 210 opened five years ago, so many drivers lined up on surface streets and onramps that the police had trouble with crowd control. The new segment, between the cities of Rialto and San Bernardino, cost $233 million to complete, bringing the freeway's total cost to about $1.2 billion over the years.

The vision for the freeway began nearly six decades ago, when officials began buying up land for a right-of-way. It moved in fits and starts, and was almost waylaid entirely over concerns it would contribute to too much sprawl, said Lombardo.

The freeway begins at Interstate 5 in northernmost Los Angeles. For most of its length it is designated Interstate 210 and is known as the Foothill Freeway, the 210 Freeway or just "the 210." The new segment is designated a "state route."

A freeway proposed for the high desert on the north side of the mountains would run between Victor Valley and Antelope Valley, but it is still in very early planning stages. It will be decades before it is completed, if the project even gets that far, said Cheryl Donahue, a spokeswoman for San Bernardino Associated Governments, which was a partner on the 210 Freeway project.

"If funds can be cobbled together, it may come in the future," she said. "Unfortunately, these big highway projects take many, many years to plan."

Inland Cities Eagar For 210 extention to Open (LA Times June 11, 2007)

Inland cities eager for 210 extension to open

Rialto and San Bernardino expect a commercial boost when the freeway is completed by the end of the year. But some residents are uneasy.

By Rong-Gong Lin II, Times Staff Writer
June 11, 2007

Map

Preparations

click to enlarge

Although the opening of the final leg of the 210 Freeway through Rialto and San Bernardino is still several months away, merchants and city officials are gleeful at the thought of new businesses already being planned along the roadway and for another route to the Los Angeles area.

"It can't happen too soon," said Midge Zupanic, president of the Rialto Chamber of Commerce, which is so happy at the prospect that it will hold its 100th anniversary black-tie gala on an unopened portion of the roadway on June 22.

The $233-million, 8-mile extension is scheduled to open by the end of the year. The Foothill Freeway now extends 67 miles from Sylmar in the San Fernando Valley through Pasadena, Arcadia, Azusa and San Dimas along the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. It ends abruptly in Fontana, not its ultimate destination of San Bernardino. About a three-quarter-mile portion of the extension is open.

The extension will link the 210 Freeway to Interstate 215 and the present California 30, giving many San Bernardino-area residents what they have wanted for decades — relief from the congested San Bernardino Freeway and an alternate route to Los Angeles. The effect on surface streets will be mixed, residents say. North-south streets congested with cars now headed for Interstate 10 should see an improvement, but streets near the new freeway should see the flow increase.

Significant work still needs to be done, including finishing on- and offramps and erecting freeway signs. On one stretch of the freeway Friday, 50-foot-long, 3-foot-diameter steel tubes rested in an eastbound carpool lane, waiting to be formed into an overhead sign. Workers were still digging drainage ditches and were gluing Botts Dots lane markers onto the roadway with a sticky, black ooze.

Not everyone welcomes the extension, however. Some worry that the extension will only add to surface-street congestion and change the nature of their cities.

"You'll get trucks coming and going," said William Avery, 75, of Rialto, "which is highly undesirable and dangerous."

Planning for the Foothill Freeway began in 1948. But the portion proposed for San Bernardino County languished unbuilt for decades because of a lack of funds and priorities that put roads elsewhere. But San Bernardino County voters approved a half-cent-on-the-dollar sales tax in 1989 that provided the money. Nine years later, construction began on a 20-mile leg, from La Verne to Fontana, that opened in 2002.

Work on the last stretch started in 2003. The cost of the entire 28-mile project is estimated to be about $1.2 billion, most of it paid for by the sales tax, said Cheryl Donahue, spokeswoman for San Bernardino Associated Governments.

Despite the lack of an official opening date, many residents are happy it will be soon.

"Beautiful! I'm excited," said San Bernardino florist Edwin Alvarado, who hopes to see an end to the 15- to 20-minute delays he says he now encounters on busy surface streets when making deliveries.

"Any time you have a main artery coming through your city like that, it has to stimulate your economy," said San Bernardino barber Jerome Lewis.

In neighboring Rialto, some civic leaders hope the city can now change its reputation as largely a bedroom community by adding restaurants and commercial establishments. Even a Target store has so far eluded Rialto, though the city is home to the store's regional distribution center.

And they say many residents are happy they won't have to drive as far to get to major businesses and will have a wider selection of good restaurants nearby.

"You can't be a bedroom community and not have the things people want — the upscale amenities and the restaurants we want," Zupanic said. Developers are already sketching plans to develop some of the vacant land surrounding the freeway extension. Zupanic said 50,000 new homes are being considered for a city whose population is 100,000.

Preliminary plans are being made to transform 112 acres near Pepper Avenue into a development with as many as 236 single-family homes, 550 apartments and more than 340,000 square feet of commercial space, said Peter Templeton, one of those working on the idea.

The opportunities for changing the face of Rialto are dramatic, he said. The northern part of the city through which the 210 Freeway extension runs is mostly barren, with rock-crushing operations and sand and gravel pits.

"It was the backside of town for all these cities," Templeton said. "You build a new freeway there, and all of a sudden you build new opportunities and a bright future."

Earline Black, 59, said she savored the idea of strolling down the street from her Rialto home of 30 years, browsing at a Barnes & Noble bookstore or a JCPenney. Now, she says, she often must make shopping trips 22 miles west to Montclair or 14 miles east to Redlands.

But other residents have mixed feelings.

Beverly Clayton, 60, said she would enjoy the new freeway route when she visits family in Pasadena, but worries about increased truck traffic near her home. She is also not happy about the idea of apartments being built close to her neighborhood of single-family homes.

"It's a Catch-22," said Clayton, a retiree. "I love where I am. I love my home. It took me 30 years, and I don't want anything to come in and disturb that, and decrease my property values."

Across the street, Avery agreed with Clayton's concerns. He also hopes, however, that the freeway extension will boost the local economy.

The retired engineer said there wasn't much of a job market in San Bernardino and Rialto. "It'll get better when they build businesses along the 210. They're going to get more sales tax monies, and this whole city will make major changes when that occurs."

Such changes have benefited Fontana, Rialto's neighbor to the west, city officials there say. When that city gained access to the freeway in 2002, Fontana was opened up to San Gabriel Valley homeowners seeking to upsize their homes, said Fontana Mayor Mark Nuaimi.

"We saw quite an influx of folks moving down east on the 210," Nuaimi said. "With increased property values came increased family income and commercial development."

Since 2002, he said, major shopping centers have sprouted near the freeway, attracting auto dealerships, home improvement stores, and, last November, a Costco.

As a result, sales tax revenue for San Bernardino County's second-largest city has doubled in five years, Nuaimi said. Money has been freed up to invest in a new library and 40-acre regional park.

"All of that is tied from the 210 and connecting folks to the west," said Fontana Mayor Mark Nuaimi. "It's really been a major lifeblood for us."

But some warn that the freeway extension will put more pressure on existing roads like California 30 and the San Bernardino Freeway heading east toward Palm Springs, which have not yet been widened to accommodate growing traffic. California 30 will lose that designation and will become part of the 210 when the extension opens.

"Everyone's excited about it until they come to the reality — and I've been saying this for years — of … all the additional traffic," said Ross Jones, the mayor of Highland, just east of San Bernardino. "Locals are going to have to stick to surface streets." The problem, Jones said, is that these freeway improvements should have been completed two decades ago.

"That's part of the transportation problem in California: We under-design and under-plan for the growth and the need," Jones said. "Therefore, all our freeways are crammed because the demand just continues to increase."

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ron.lin@latimes.com

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BS Ranch Perspective

Everyone is in a hurry to get home!! They don't have time to stop off the freeway and get anything but maybe a tank of gas!! So, the Commercial that they are waiting for might just be a pipe dream, Most of Highland Ave. Dried up of the businesses that were on there and they are just now starting to come back and that is only because they are dreaming that the new extension of the 210 will bring the business back. But what took the business away from Highland.

I will tell you it was the Completion of the Crosstown Freeway, that is going to be also known as the 210 Freeway or 30, Cross town Freeway, Unless the Crosstown ends at the 215 Freeway. I believe that if the people live beyond Rialto they will drive beyond Rialto, and that will be that!! say good by to them unless the people that they are talking about are the ones that move to Rialto to live. that is different. If that is the case then they are here and they are stuck.

BS Ranch

Cancer Risk Raises for Those Near Rail Yards (LA Times 052507)

Cancer risk rises for those near rail yards

A study says Commerce neighborhoods near several major facilities face a greater threat from diesel soot than residents elsewhere.

By Janet Wilson, Times Staff Writer
May 25, 2007

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Residents who live in the shadow of Southern California's booming rail yards face cancer risks from soot as much as 140% greater than in the rest of the region, according to new studies by state air regulators.

In addition, clouds of diesel exhaust blown by the wind from the rail yards blanket wide swaths of Greater Los Angeles, upping annual cancer risks slightly for millions more residents.

"The risks are much higher than they ought to be, and we need to do everything we can to reduce them," said Michael Scheible, deputy executive officer of the California Air Resources Board.

The health risk assessments, which were released in draft form this week, were prepared as part of a voluntary agreement between the nation's two largest railroads and the state air board. Such assessments have been done only once before in California, at a Roseville rail yard.

Hardest hit in the region are neighborhoods in Commerce that are near one Union Pacific and three BNSF yards. Residents in the tidy, working-class neighborhoods of Bandini and Ayers-Leonis are 70% to 140% more likely to contract cancer from diesel soot than people in the rest of Los Angeles. Regulators said some homes are only a few feet from rail-yard fence lines, and there are schools and parks near the yards, which operate around the clock 365 days a year.

Other rail yards and neighborhoods covered by the initial round of studies include Union Pacific's Los Angeles Transportation Center, Mira Loma near Union Pacific's yard in Riverside County and a BNSF facility in Wilmington. In those places, residents are 11% to 26% more likely to contract cancer from soot.

Railroad officials said the studies showed that the rail yards produce less than 1% of the region's diesel particulate emissions. But they said they were concerned about their contribution to local health risks and were spending millions of dollars to slash emissions in coming years with hundreds of new locomotives, anti-idling devices, cleaner fuels and other measures.

"We're certainly part of the issue," said Lanny Schmid, director of Union Pacific's environmental programs. "We like to think we're a small part of the issue, and we're going to get it even smaller."

But angry, anxious Commerce residents and others who were informed of the higher health risks at a City Hall briefing Wednesday night said faster action was needed. They also were disturbed that risks of respiratory disease, asthma and impaired lung function — all shown in numerous studies to increase with exposure to diesel soot — were not included in the health assessments.

"We need to figure out what we can do now, right now," said Commerce Mayor Robert Fierro, who added that as a schoolteacher he regularly received absentee notes for children who have suffered from asthma attacks or bronchitis.

"We've lived in Commerce since the 1950s, and I come from a family of four generations of asthma in the home," resident Nancy Ramos said. "My 4-year-old grandson is already dealing with asthma, including two ambulance visits."

"Quite honestly it's laughable" not to include health risks such as asthma and respiratory disease, said Ian MacMillan, who conducts similar health risk studies for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Scheible said state health guidelines, which were prepared in the late 1980s, don't call for non-cancer health risks to be included, and, he said, they are more difficult to assess accurately. But he said that if enough people wanted officials to try, they would see if it could be done for the final reports.

The analyses showed that in addition to locomotives, giant cranes, refrigerated cars and aging short-haul trucks contribute to diesel emissions in the yards.

Trucks on nearby freeways and busy streets also add risk. The Commerce yards, for instance, spewed out a combined 40 tons of soot in 2005, while short-haul trucks on nearby streets put out about 113 tons.

Modeling and weather data used in the study showed that lower levels of soot spread for miles from the yards. The Union Pacific Los Angeles facility, which is less than a mile from downtown, spread a fine blanket of soot as much as four miles east and north of the facility, increasing cancer risk for 1.2 million residents by an average 10 chances in a million.

A past study has shown that cancer risks are highest at the ports that feed the rail yards.

But activists and local air regulators said the elevated cancer risks near the yards were "extremely high" compared with those near refineries and other "stationary sources," which are tightly regulated.

Allowable levels of risk from factories and other industrial sources are between 10 and 25 chances per million in the Los Angeles air basin, said South Coast Air Quality Management District spokesman Sam Atwood. Railroads claim exemption from local and state air pollution laws under interstate commerce clauses.

"Living next to a rail yard is like having a factory with 100 smokestacks going all the time," said Angelo Logan, head of East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice.

Mark Stehly, assistant vice president of environmental for BNSF, said it was unfair to compare factories with rail yards because locomotives and other mobile equipment cannot be fitted with the same types of heavy, high-volume emission control devices as factories.

"For [a rail yard] to be treated as a stationary source, it's appealing in its simplicity, but it's really not true. They are mobile sources," he said.

Additional meetings will be held on the studies in the next two months. The study findings are at http://www.arb.ca.gov/railyard/hra/hra.htm

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janet.wilson@latimes.com

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BS Ranch Perspective:

I am not one that is sold on that outcome of the Diesel Engine being the Source of all that danger that they claim. I believe that they are blowing up figures to fit into their functions of having what they consider to be a vile obnoxious machine causing all kinds of smells and smoke that they themselves don't want to see any more. So they want to see the Diesel Engine Outlawed and taken off the road, but if they did that they would have a greater problem of hauling goods to their locations to bring goods and services to their stores for sales. It would leave a huge void and make you wonder what is going to take their place in making the long haul. You wonder what is going to power the Big Rig Truck and make it a long hauler, The Diesel gets about 6 to 9 miles to the gallon, but if they replaced that with a Gas burning engine, then they would have to use two trucks to haul what they do with one Diesel, and they would deal with Negative Mileages, regarding the gas engine when hauling the smaller loads. GREAT HUH..Diesel is the better engine to use.

BS Ranch

Meet 'Mac' Driver Extraordinaire (Daily Bulletin) 1 million accident-free miles qualify man to promote safety

Meet 'Mack,' safe truck driver extraordinaire
1 million accident-free miles qualify man to promote safety
By Jason Pesick, Staff Writer
Article Launched: 04/02/2007 12:00:00 AM PDT



Dellonzo 'Mack' McAdory, 39, of Rialto, who has been driving big trucks since 1989, stands in front of the truck he drives for FedEx on Monday March 26, 2007. McAdory recently joined an elite group of American Trucking Association drivers who have driven over a million miles without an accident.
(Brett Snow/Staff photographer) RIALTO - Driving on local freeways can be like playing a game of "Frogger," with irritated drivers darting between all the trucks.
But that's not how Dellonzo McAdory, or "Mack," views the trucks on the road. The 39-year-old trucker was recently named to an elite national group of 16 drivers who travel the country representing truck drivers and promoting safety.

"Can you imagine if we didn't have any trucks? Man, we'd be lost," McAdory said at the FedEx distribution center in Rialto, where he is based. Trucks bring us 89 percent of the goods we use, he said.

After driving 1 million miles without getting into an accident, McAdory was named to America's Road Team, an outreach group for the American Trucking Associations, in January.

Rialto may be known as a bedroom community, but south of the 10 Freeway is a growing cluster of transportation centers. The FedEx center McAdory runs his operation out of - he owns three trucks and is a contractor with FedEx - employs at least 1,000 people, said Jim Fleming, a senior manager at the facility. The parking lot was packed with white FedEx Ground trucks on a recent Monday morning.

McAdory said he has worked with FedEx for more than four years. Every

Wednesday morning, he and another driver, Craig Manigo, head out to Atlanta and return on Sunday by way of Sacramento.
They take turns driving for 11 hours and take 10-hour breaks. McAdory's truck has some basic creature comforts: a bunk bed and a refrigerator.

McAdory, who lives in Highland, doesn't get to see his two children, two stepchildren and his wife, Lamonica, as much as he'd like.

"Unfortunately, we just have to work," he said.

But his job has taken Mc-

Adory to all 48 contiguous states, he said.

"For me, it is like a road trip."

Even though he enjoys all the driving, McAdory did not make it 1 million accident-free miles without being incredibly safety- conscious.

During his first few months of the two-year stint with America's Road Team, he has already been to Washington, D.C., and Austin, Texas, touting safety to anyone who will listen.

"We're speaking about sharing the road with big truckers," he said.

Among his recommendations to drivers:

Pay attention to blind spots. If you cannot see a driver in his mirror, he cannot see you.

When passing a truck, make sure you can see its headlights in your rear-view mirror before moving back over.

Don't linger around the side of a big truck.

Stay at least 20 car lengths behind a big truck.

A truck can weigh up to 80,000 pounds when full and take the length of a football field to stop, he said.

McAdory is the fourth person from the FedEx hub in Rialto to make it on America's Road Team, said Fleming. That's a high honor considering Mc-

Adory is the only driver on the West Coast to be on the team right now.

After meeting McAdory, it's clear he has an unusual amount of enthusiasm for the art of driving. He said he studies different driving habits as he drives across the country every week.

When he retires, McAdory said he wants to buy an RV. He recommends that everyone take a road trip.

"We have some beautiful country," he said.

During his travels, he's made friends with people he meets along his route at different truck stops and by stopping at some of the same places on each trip.

McAdory enjoys driving, but he also sees trucking as important work.

"If there was no trucking, America would virtually come to a stop."



























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BS Ranch Perspective:

"Mac" is a great guy in my eyes, one of the guys that takes it easy and lays back on the freeway, when there is a large cog of traffic commonly known as a traffic jam, and the truck drivers lay back, and get a hug 500' gap between the front of their rigs and the rear of the car or truck in front of them. Comedians make fun of them because they say that they cannot figure out what or way they leave all that room there. But when you travel like a whole bunch of cattle in a cattle chute, you are going to rear end the Cow, in this case the car or truck, in front of you that stops short! So, having that 500 or so feet is not that bad of an idea. In fact it is pretty smart and It was learned and practiced by this typist often!

BS Ranch