Six p.m. on the northbound Pasadena Freeway and nothing is moving but time. Red taillights as far as you can see, with hundreds more feeding into the narrowing traffic stream near the four-level. This is high-tech travel at three miles per hour.This is also a prolonged, interactive commercial for the construction of the Pasadena Blue Line. The old Arroyo Parkway, constrained as it is by its geography, has no room for additional auto or bus lanes. The Arroyo conveys vehicles the way it used to channel floods. But channeled water moves deadly fast. Channeled traffic doesn’t seem to move at all.Yes indeed, after a half-hour of snarl, your imagination lusts to see rows of bright train windows swooshing across the overpasses, carrying Pasadena’s day shift south toward Pico-Union and downtown’s white-shoed lawyers back to the groves of the Crown City, stopping along the way to discharge passengers at Chinatown and Highland Park. In late-evening traffic, even $687 million doesn’t seem too much to spend for a cure.
Source: The Arroyo Special | L.A. Weekly