A working group from the city of Pasadena studying the 710 Freeway extension project has ruled out a tunnel that would permit vehicles to continue traveling at freeway speeds beneath residences of Alhambra, South Pasadena and west Pasadena.

The seven-member SR-710 Alternative Working Group said in a March 9 letter to Pasadena Mayor Bill Bogaard and City Manager Michael Beck that Pasadena should reject the tunnel option. Instead, the panel recommends Caltrans and Metro build alternatives that focus on “moving people, rather than vehicles.”

The group wants to see a “multi-modal” approach that includes the following tunnel alternatives: a light-rail line, expanded bus service, improvements to local streets and bicycle transit.

“This group has been meeting since September,” said city spokesman William Boyer. “They are all Pasadena residents. They’ve created a dialogue involving local residents to help explore alternatives.”

The group consists of Stephen Acker, Joel Bryant, Alan Clelland, Sarah Gavit, David Grannis, Jennifer Higginbotham and Geoffrey Baum.

Baum, president of the West Pasadena Residents’ Association, penned an article in the group’s most recent newsletter entitled “Help Stop SR-710 Tunnel Through West Pasadena,” in which he lays out the group’s strong objections to the idea.

“Metro and Caltrans are using our tax dollars to promote a freeway tunnel that will cost billions, degrade our air and environment, flood our neighborhood streets with traffic and take decades to complete, forever altering our community,” Baum wrote.

On April 13, the City Council will meet at 6:30 p.m. at the Pasadena Convention Center to discuss the 710 extension, and the outcome could influence the council and mayor’s decision. Boyer said the working group’s goal is to get the City Council to incorporate its report into the comments solicited by Metro and Caltrans on the 710 extension Draft Environmental Impact Report/Environmental Impact Statement, released March 6.

It is not clear if the group read the EIR/EIS, which amounts to two volumes at 2,200 pages and a total of more than 26,000 pages when counting the technical studies. The EIR/EIS concluded that a $5.65 billion tunnel from where the freeway ends at Valley Boulevard to the 210 in Pasadena would provide the greatest amount of traffic relief and the fewest impacts of all the alternatives.

“Whether the tunnel proposal would reduce congestion and north-south corridor travel times rather than simply shift existing traffic onto a newly created route without measurable improvements to the network or positive impact on local traffic in Pasadena could not be determined,” the group wrote.

Though not in the letter, many western Pasadena residents are concerned about a series of six ventilation structures that would be built along West Colorado Boulevard near where the 710 would connect with the 134 and 210 freeways.

Each structure, about 50 feet tall, would make the approach to Old Pasadena more “vivid” and “create an interesting, colorful entrance to the area,” according to the EIR/EIS section on the visual impacts of a freeway tunnel.

“These ventilation structures would be the predominant visual element in this view due to their size and colors. The overall change in visual quality would be minor,” the report concluded.

The EIR/EIS also found that the construction of a 7.5-mile light-rail train from East Los Angeles through Alhambra and Pasadena would have a greater impact than the 6.3-mile tunnel. A train would require taking more land and building elevated tracks that “disrupt the social fabric of the community in East Los Angeles” and block views of the San Gabriel Mountains in Pasadena.

The working group said any new light-rail train must connect with existing Gold Line stations and not add additional at-grade crossings.