On a recent Thursday evening, traffic was slow on the 10 Freeway as cars crawled into the downtown Los Angeles area. It was an average commute back to Pasadena for Bryan Gonzalez until he saw a man on the other side of the freeway cutting through a guardrail with a reciprocating saw.
“OK, there’s something weird going on,” Gonzalez said about his observations from Aug. 21, which he captured on video and reported to Caltrans. “I was debating whether or not saying anything, but I said, ‘Hey, I’m in slow traffic. He has a saw. No, thank you.’”
What Gonzalez observed was not a fluke. Guardrail theft is a problem that has been on the rise for the last eight years, according to the local Caltrans office covering L.A. and Ventura counties. Over the last two years, the state transportation agency has spent more than $62,000 on repairs related to guardrail theft in the region…