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Neighborhood Councils and Community Groups Urged to Stay Engaged as Bridge Project Nears
By Rosie Knight, Columnist
After multiple community hearings and 90 days of public comment, Caltrans has released its final Environmental Impact Report on the upcoming Vincent Thomas Bridge repairs project. Following suggestions from local community advocates and neighborhood councils, Caltrans will pursue a “single-stage construction” schedule to close the bridge completely for at least 16 months. The full closure of the Vincent Thomas Bridge will have a massive impact on the Harbor Area community. However, the report doesn’t reflect or make concrete promises on how Caltrans will deal with that aspect of the construction.
A statement from Councilman Tim McOsker’s office highlighted that he was glad Caltrans chose the single-stage construction option and that they’d engage the community advisory committee and technical advisory committee. But he was less pleased about the lack of accountability the report promised to the community.
“There were other demands that Caltrans brushed off with ambiguity and a lack of commitment,” McOsker explained in a released statement. “For instance, I raised the issue of road conditions, stressing that all detour routes must be adequately repaired before and after the Caltrans closure, which will add significantly more truck and commuter trips daily throughout the construction.”
McOsker excoriated Caltrans’ response, “The repair of local streets is not within the jurisdiction of Caltrans; however … Caltrans will work with local jurisdictional agencies to find opportunities to repair detour routes before and after construction,” saying that it lacked any accountability.
“This non-response offers little assurance to a community that will bear the brunt of this project,” McOsker said. “This is but one example of a lack of specificity or enforceability in the final EIR. I will use the coming days and weeks to advocate for accountability and concrete commitments within the Caltrans responses to our comments.”
Those worries were echoed by community advocate and former member of the LA Harbor Commission Diane Middleton, who told Random Lengths over email, “The Final EIR supports closing the bridge entirely to do the necessary work. This allows the shortest time for the bridge to be closed (totally nonusable) and also makes it easier to adjust (hopefully shorten) the construction schedule. The EIR does not really address mitigating the community impacts particularly the burden it will place on those neighborhoods where the traffic is redirected. Many communities adjacent to the bridge already suffer from poorly maintained roads due to the industrial traffic from the Port. Those roads should be repaired before the bridge closure adds more traffic to the already overburdened roads. The EIR is short on those details.”
Luckily, the fight isn’t over though, as McOsker told Random Lengths.
“Caltrans is responsible for making good on the vague promises they’ve made in the document, many of which are good but vague and unenforceable. So, I’ve reached out to our state assembly member, Mike Gipson, who’s an excellent representative of our area, to ask him to participate — which he’s happy to do — I’ve reached out to Janice Hahn our supervisor,” McOsker said.
This is part of McOsker’s multi-pronged approach, keeping the pressure on as the project progresses.
He wants to convene a group of state legislators, county legislators and local legislators; and then, allow Caltrans to provide specific plans they will implement to ensure the mitigation measures happen.
“So it’ll be the political response first, asking them — for example — to give us the details of the traffic mitigation plan,” McOsker said. “Give us the details and facts for advertising about the ‘Harborgeddon.’ Give us the details of all of the issues, one by one by one, where we’ve made comments.” McOsker said. “They’ve given these well-intentioned but vague responses. Then in a public setting, we have a public opportunity for folks to hear and see all of the plans and information on all of the actors involved: Caltrans, the responsible district, and our names and numbers.”
That accessibility and public-facing conversation is key to how McOsker plans to hold Caltrans accountable and get the repairs, clarity of communication, and responsibility that the community deserves and has called for on multiple occasions. “We need to continue to have the Technical Advisory Committee operate, the Community Advisory Committee operate. There’s a commitment that I want to flesh out — that Caltrans has made — that there will be essentially a committee that will review the traffic plans and the traffic mitigation. So we need to get all of these plans in the next year before the construction starts, get all of these plans in place and made available to the public with contact information, for example, who’s responsible for implementing things, like when vehicles break down on the bridge today, we know that there’s a rapid response to go remove those vehicles and getting traffic flowing. Who is going to be responsible for making sure the detour routes are available, as an example? And we need phone numbers, and we need to make sure that we push all that information out,” McOsker said.
Invoking the now infamous LA traffic news story “Carmageddon” again, McOsker is keen that the affected neighborhoods in District 15 be given the same amount of support, news coverage, and communication that the affected areas got when there was a ten-mile closure of the 405 Freeway in 2011. As he fights to make that happen — as well as more transparency and support from Caltrans as they embark on the project, which is currently slated to begin in early 2026 — he has advice for local community members who want to get involved.
“The best thing for them to do is to hold me accountable, for starters,” McOsker said. “To make sure that we have public spaces in Wilmington and San Pedro and Harbor City, to make sure that we are having these open forums and information. And then also to get the information we’ll make public on the phone numbers and the electronic spaces to track all of this. Then to comment on the plans, yeah, stay active and involved. They can do it today through neighborhood councils, and that’s important space but I think we also need to be working with the neighborhood councils to create specialized times and spaces to talk specifically about this plan over the next year as we know the construction is slated to start in early 2026 so this, all of this work needs to happen — it sounds like a long time, but it’s not — through 2025 to get specificity on plans, and then folks should review the plans, comment on them.”
He also called for neighborhood councils, homeowners groups, and neighborhood watch groups to share the information and review these plans, along with unions like the ILWU and organizations like the Pacific Maritime Association. “I also think we need to get our chambers of [commerces] in Wilmington and San Pedro to get information out to their networks. So everyone needs to be actively engaged and ready for this as if, as if it’s ‘Harborgedden,’ which I think it could well be, and it could also be avoided,” McOsker said.
