Insane environmental study plans to spend millions to consider 10 Freeway removal: Complete waste of money

A Southern California city is facing backlash after it accepted a $2 million grant to study whether a major stretch of the 10 should be covered with a giant park — or eventually ripped out altogether.The Santa Monica City Council recently approved a resolution allowing officials to study ways to reconnect neighborhoods divided by the 10 freeway, citing the need to address “historical harm” and “environmental hazards,” according to the Santa Monica Daily Press.The study will focus on the freeway’s impact on the city’s historically Black Pico Neighborhood and residents whose homes were displaced when the roadway was built.But critics say the proposal sounds more like a taxpayer-funded fantasy than a serious transportation plan.Under the resolution, city officials agreed to examine the “trade-offs between capping and alternatives such as freeway removal” while also seeking to “reaffirm the City’s commitment to closing the freeway and follow models of municipalities that restored and healed cities by removing freeways.”One option being studied would place a massive land bridge over the 10 Freeway between 11th and 20th streets, effectively creating a park above the roadway.“It’s basically a park on top of a highway,” Senior Park Planner Antonio Lopez told the council.Lopez also acknowledged the proposal remains highly conceptual, describing the study as “basically a design project without … a design.”Councilmember Ellis Raskin argued the freeway’s construction came at the expense of minority communities.“It was black and Latino families” whose homes were demolished to make way for the freeway in the 1950s, Raskin said.But he suggested even the park concept may not go far enough.“Capping the freeway, in my opinion, would be a partial improvement, but it doesn’t solve the underlying problems,” Raskin told the council.“We need to stay focused on the long-term goal of removing the freeway and replacing it with parks, a grand ...