Tear out the Santa Monica Freeway? Are City Council members insane?

Common sense just might be dead at Santa Monica City Hall.How else to explain a proposal to rip out a large swath of Interstate 10?The City Council in June voted 7-0 to accept a $2 million federal grant to study “cap parks” over the Santa Monica Freeway between 11th and 20th streets. But council members didn’t stop there.They also told staff (with straight faces) to study obliterating that segment of the freeway.Evidently, council members think Santa Monica would benefit from destroying the main transportation route in and out of the city.The term for this is sheer lunacy.  California's top news, sports and entertainment delivered to your inbox every day.

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Never miss a story City officials claim the stretch of freeway, which opened in the 1960s, displaced more than 1,500 residents in what is now a mostly black and Latino community. Apparently they would atone for that now, 60 years later, by crippling everyone’s capacity to connect with the rest of Los Angeles.To dump even a fraction of Santa Monica’s I-10 traffic onto city surface streets would create soul-crushing gridlock on arteries such as Pico, Olympic and Santa Monica boulevards. That’s what the council wants? For real?Just this week, City Manager Oliver Chi bemoaned declining tourism in Santa Monica, blaming that convenient villain Donald Trump.But the president aside, what exactly do Chi and the council expect to happen to tourism if they cut freeway access to the beach? California Post News: Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube, WhatsApp, LinkedInCalifornia Post Sports Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, XCalifornia Post Opinion California Post Newsletters: Sign up here!California Post App: Download here!Home delivery: Sign up here!Page Six Hollywood: Sign up here!It certainly won’t go up.If only this farce were a story from the ...