PASADENA >> A mixed bag of reason, outrage, begging and accusations ping-ponged through the Pasadena Convention Center on Tuesday at the second public hearing on closing a 4.5-mile 710 Freeway gap.

Pasadena resident Michael Colton, an architect and urban planner, said rather than spend $5.65 billion on an underground tunnel, that money should be spent expanding a light rail system.

“The freeway tunnel is a 20th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” he said. “We can’t build our way out of gridlock with more freeways. We need to move people, not vehicles.

“For example, Caltrans recently spent over $1 billion to widen the 405 Freeway over the Sepulveda Pass. After all that money spent, travel times are one minute slower at peak times than before construction.”

The California Department of Transportation and Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority spent four years and $40 million studying ways to curb traffic congestion resulting from a 710 Freeway gap between Valley Boulevard in Alhambra and Del Mar Avenue in Pasadena. Their SR-710 draft report provides five possible solutions: no build, improved traffic management system, busway with few stops, 7.5-mile light-rail or 6.3-mile freeway tunnel. Caltrans has proposed “closing the 710 gap” for nearly 60 years.

About 220 people attended the public hearing — a greater number than were at the first one — but fewer speakers spoke. Some 46 people shared their opinions.

Paul Talbot, the city manager of Monterey Park, said South Pasadena proposed a no-build option in the early ‘90s. City officials said the Gold Line would solve traffic problems the freeway gap created, but the light-rail line didn’t solve congestion on local streets, he said.

“The only thing that will remove the cars off of the surface roads is the completion of the 710 Freeway,” he said.

Metro and Caltran’s 26,000-page report reasoned a 6.3-mile freeway tunnel — 4.2 miles of which is completely underground — would offer the most traffic relief and the fewest impacts. Neither agency supported a specific option.

The Pasadena City Council, in a vote Monday, made an about-face regarding the city’s 14-year commitment to extending the 710 Freeway and, instead, said the tunnel option would be detrimental to the City of Roses.

Pasadena resident Christopher Cunningham said local communities will benefit from improved public transit routes.

“The only solution to the congestion of cars is to get people out of their cars and give them alternatives,” he said. “The only alternatives that you’ve given us to choose from is light-rail alternative and bus rapid transit alternative, and both of those alternatives may be slightly flawed in their conception, but they’re the better alternatives for all of the impacted neighborhoods.”

Entrepreneur Ron Mukai disagreed, saying the proposed light-rail system between East Los Angeles and Pasadena would be detrimental to East L.A. because it would displace businesses and “fracture the community.”

“The shopping center on Mednik and 3rd — this is the lifeblood of the community. It has over 20 businesses that employ all these local people, and this is just one small example.”

East L.A. resident Martha Sandoval-Hernandez cried as she told Caltrans and Metro that congestion and freeway traffic has given her, her children and even her grandson asthma.

“I’m asking for compassion and mercy,” she said. “I’m begging to look at us. We are all sick; we all carry inhalers. We have chronic cough. We have allergies. All because we are a pass-through for other cities. … They have to consider another way to go through because we have to spend the little money we have on medicine and medical care.”

Miriam Nakamura-Quan of San Marino said as baby boomers age, they will need better public and multimodal transportation, so the tunnel option should be trashed.

Former state Assemblyman Anthony Portantino expressed anger that public questions are not addressed at these public hearings and said the questions should be answered at a future public hearing.

“Where is the cost-benefit analysis?” he asked repeatedly as the audience clapped. “How do we know that this project has a benefit and what is the cost?”