San Pedro Residents Critique CalTrans Draft EIR at Vincent Thomas Bridge Meeting

By Rosie Knight, Columnist

In CalTrans’ second public meeting about the Vincent Thomas Bridge Deck Replacement project,  which was far less attended than their first in Wilmington — local residents and organizers gathered in the Peck Park Community Center to give their thoughts on the huge project. 

Like the first public comment meeting, the June 13 feedback session was filled with insightful critiques from local community members and Councilman Tim McOsker. The District 15 representative reiterated his thoughts from the Wilmington meeting. These include suggestions for CalTrans to pay to help other construction projects in the Wilmington and Harbor Area before the bridge project and repair them after the inevitable damage that the rerouting will create to the already heavily used roads. “We are all in this together,” he reassured. “And I think it’s also going to be very important for us to have Caltrans consider all the cumulative effects on other projects.”

Multiple representatives from the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters encouraged CalTrans to hire locally and focus on creating jobs in the region. That was a thread that was repeated throughout the meeting as attendees reminded CalTrans of the economic impact of the Port of LA and the people who make that possible. 

Another great point was made by Northwest San Pedro Neighborhood Council president, Ray Regalado, who ended his powerful comments by calling out the way CalTrans was presenting the information. “What I’d like to say is that we have a diverse community here and most of the information that we see is all in English. There is a high population of Spanish speakers and I have not seen much of this information being shared in Spanish. We really need to do that. And we have other communities that are multilingual within our area that need to know what’s going to happen.”

Random Lengths News publisher and Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council board member, James Preston Allen,  spoke as a community member and didn’t mince words. 

“The publication of your EIR is deficient,” he stated. “There are 94,000 people who live in San Pedro and over 100,000 in Wilmington, and we still have empty seats. I don’t think you’ve done the proper legal notice advertising or sufficient public outreach for a meeting like this.” 

He also expressed support for McOsker’s widely well-received suggestions for Caltrans at both meetings. 

There was something entirely new at the San Pedro meeting though which was a suggestion by Rhea Matthews who offered up a radical alternative to all of the plans. 

“I want to take a step back and advocate for a wider bridge, another bridge,” she said. 

Yep, Matthews suggested the construction of a new bridge entirely, which would be built alongside the Vincent Thomas Bridge, allowing it to stay open until the new one was finished and then the closures to repair it would begin. 

“We can add bike lanes to connect San Pedro with the Port of Long Beach. It would also allow us to connect with Long Beach and add emergency lanes for traffic accidents,” she said.

As Matthews succinctly put it as the meeting came to an end, “Repairing the bridge rather than building something new is like putting lipstick on a pig.”

You can still comment on the VTB project via written comment until mid-July.