Neighbors of Freeway Sound Off for a Wall

ALHAMBRA — After robbing a local supermarket some years ago, the suspect dashed past Francine Ryan’s apartment building near the freeway, clambered over a chain-link fence and escaped in a getaway car down the freeway.

On other occasions, motorists who ran out of gas on the San Bernardino Freeway would scale the fence, knock on doors at the Royal Gardens Apartments and ask to use the telephone.

“I have kids in the house,” resident Christine Olguin said. “I can’t open the door to just anybody.”

Olguin, Ryan and a dozen neighbors at the West Ramona Road apartment complex confronted transportation officials last week, demanding that the state install eight-foot walls between their buildings and the freeway, which is less than 50 yards away.

Residents say such a wall would reduce traffic noise as well as protect the neighborhood from unwanted visitors and cars that may careen off the freeway.

“There is no denying that it’s noisy,” said Oscar C. Villacorte, a senior engineer for the state Department of Transportation. But he said the residents do not qualify for a sound wall because their building was erected after the freeway was.

To qualify for a wall, the residents would have to get their state legislators to change the law, Villacorte said.

Even if they can do that, they may still have a long wait, Villacorte said. More than 200 communities statewide are already on the waiting list for the walls.

Michael Rotstan, a resident leading the fight for a wall, said he and his neighbors deserve to be at the top of the waiting list because, in addition to noise pollution, they also face safety problems.

“Children climb over the fence,” Rotstan said. “Cars almost careen through the fence.”

Most residents have at least two young children, Ryan said. It is impossible for parents to always keep an eye on them, especially since there are no locks on the building gates, she said.

Rotstan, who lived at the county-subsidized complex in the early 1980s and recently moved back, said he knew about the noise problem but, as with many of his neighbors, could not afford to live elsewhere. Residents pay rent on a sliding scale according to income. “We do not have a choice,” said Elizabeth Mejia, a 24-year-old mother of two toddlers. “Our choice is to move here or be homeless.”

Although the buildings were designed so that no windows face the freeway, the rumbling of passing trucks--and trains on tracks between the east and westbound lanes--often shake the buildings, Mejia said.

Michael Duffy, an assistant to state Sen. Joseph Montoya (D-El Monte), said the senator has asked Caltrans for a report on the risks to residents’ safety.

The sound-wall waiting list is outdated because it does not take into account environmental changes since the freeway was built, Duffy said. For example, commuter bus lanes added in recent years have changed the environmental impact of the freeway, he said.

Marta Maestas, a spokeswoman for Assemblyman Charles Calderon (D-Montebello), said Calderon will try to address the residents’ concerns by focusing on the safety issues rather than their complaints about sound.