The following was posted in the comments section in the post about Carlsbad's plans for Ponto,
The bad news is the minimum estimate of 15,000 cars cutting through Leucadia each day will further degrade Encinitas by putting even more gridlock along the HW101 corridor throughout Encinitas.
Encinitas needs to manage the traffic volume cutting through Encinitas and encourage them to stay on I5!
The development should be conditioned to:
1. Design the access improvements to encourage access from Avenida Encinas- NOT LEUCADIA HW101.
2. Redesigning the La Costa/HW101 intersection to:
a. Reduce the current southbound HW101 through lanes to one at La Costa Avenue for a small segment to manage the cut through traffic in Encinitas. Making this small change would help Encinitas tremendously by moving the morning cut through commuters queue north to Ponto (which is were it belongs) instead of grid locking all of Leucadia and Encinitas every time that I5 gets backed up. The Cut through traffic problem is only going to get worse in the future with I5 currently backed up 50% of the time with projections to get much worse in the near future.
b. Include two left hand turn lanes from southbound HW101 turning east on La Costa Avenue.
3. Improve La Costa Avenue to handle the increased future traffic-including:
a. Rebuilding the existing bridge over the railroad tracks.
b. Rebuilding the intersections of Vulcan Avenue and Sheridan Road to assure no increase in cut through traffic through the Leucadia neighborhood east of HW101.
c. Bike lanes and Walkways, and Landscaping improvements.
Our Encinitas’s Staff and City Council need to get their game on and make sure Encinitas manages its roads and protect our City from the negative impacts of Carlsbad’s development policies.
Time will tell whether staff and City Council are watching our back. What kind of conditions do you think our City Council will suggest being included in the Specific Plans conditions of approval?
You people are all the same. There has never once been a documented case where new development caused problems for neighbors and adjoining towns.
ReplyDeletemp - please drive out to San Elijo Hills and then drive in during almost any commute. San Elijo hills made no accomadations or plans for NCTD in the development, hence EVERYONE in that development must drive to enter and exit. Follow the stream of cars, nice for awhile then gridlock in Encinitas. Very poorly traffic planning and execution in that city development. This is not an isolated case. Your position just does not hold water, sorry.
ReplyDeletemp...What have you been smoking?....but not at the beach, I hope.
ReplyDeleteLots of traffic this Memorial Day Weekend.
ReplyDeleteHappy weekend, guys and gals.
uh people,
ReplyDeletemp is farking with you
Smoking? I can't smoke any more because I have been walking too much. I have been walking around the walkable San Elijo Hills. San Elijo Hills is a new development, it is a shinning example of how much the San Diego development industry is sincere about San Diego by bringing you smart growth and walkability. San Elijo hills is the new urbanism, smart growth, walkable. Didn't you read the advertisements? San Elijo hills also has the other buzzwords that we want! Vibrant and bustling!
ReplyDeleteHow about a toll booth on hwy 101 just south of La Costa? We could operate when tyraffic flows are heavy.
ReplyDeletemp,
ReplyDeleteyou funny!
Is the city, Leucadia 101 or Leucadia town council commenting on the eir?
MP=Mick Pattinson
ReplyDeleteMick is correct. More traffic is less traffic if you make a million bucks off it.
MP has a great sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteHumor is good, but let’s see if Council is running point guard on this issue. It is a huge issue for all of Encinitas.
"...never once been a documented case where new development caused problems for neighbors and adjoining towns."
ReplyDeleteWe don't need documentation when there is gridlock on freeway 5 and Coast Hwy 101 every morning staring us all in the face. The conjestion doesn't come from outer space. It comes from poorly planned and unbalanced development. A bad ratio of homes to roads.
Well then. We should build more San Elijo Hills. From the advertisements, the Building Industry, regional planners we are told that San Elijo Hills will save us all from overcrowding. Save us from gridlock.
ReplyDeleteHigh density reduces traffic congestion and reduces resource usage! Didn’t you know that?
From the Dec 22 2006 Coast News, "a newer community within the city of san marcos has embraced development standards creating a walkalb space where pedestrians rather than cars are the focus. Built in 1998... san elijo hills has incorporated "new urbanism" into its overall design, creating an extensive trail system, a walkable downtown [and traffic calming]." Yeap, all of this stuff to justify all the extra density!
According to Gil this utopia is causing problems for us. People still own cars and all that traffic coming out of SEH funnels right down Leucadia Blvd.
Developers have a business. It is to make as much money as possible. They do this by packing in as many homes as possible and paying for the least amount of infrastructure possible. If they can fool a lot of people into believing that "new urbanism" is the next utopia then people will look the other way when they upzone their property. Don't be fooled.
There is nothing new with living in a high density neighborhood or a master planned community. THERE IS NOTHING NEW or especially SMART about it. It is the same story in new wrapping paper.
If you want to live in the city move to New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, or Downtown San Diego and take your Smart growth with you. Who wants to live where there a little elbowroom when you could live within a rock’s throw of 25 people you don't want to hang out with.
Did the Encinitas city manager or the city council DIRECT (tell) someone on the planning staff to write comments about the Ponto EIR? Official Encinitas city comments must be included as part of the Carlsbad EIR.
ReplyDeleteCouncil people, did you tell Phil Cotton to have the planning department respond in writing about that EIR before the deadline? Or is Phil Cotton going to use the excuse that he needed direct from the council?
Will the Encinitas city comments be given in a staff report on a regular agenda?
Is staff sitting on their A's?
The Coast News has taken many, many dollars of advertising from San Elijo Hills. No wonder that they wrote such a positive story. Look at the back cover of every issue.
ReplyDeleteanon 1115,
ReplyDeleteshow me any san diego newspaper that has reported the negative effects of new development?
The firm that did the EIR is RFB. RBF is responsible for the majority of development within Irvine. Now I know why Carlsbad is using them. Don’t you just love Irvine?
ReplyDeleteTheir EIR is classic. It calls Encinitas Streets like N. Coast HW101- "Carlsbad Boulevard". It also shows the the existing level of service at Leucadia Boulevard and N.Coast HW101 are acceptable and will be acceptable with another 15,000 cars per day. Uaaa- Guess again?
The report doesn't even include the intersection of Vulcan and Leucadia Blvd. Uaaaa- You don’t need to be a land planning Einstein to know that intersection will be complete HELL.
Without major improvements to improve our streets and protect quality of life, this development will be bad news for Encinitas.
Can you say permanent gridlock? I sure hope our City Engineer and Traffic Engineer are making solid recommendations to the City Manager and Council to make sure appropriate mitigation measures are included in the conditions of approval.
Were the fire department on this one? I don't think permanent gridlock throughout Encinitas will be good for response times. Maybe they will see the light and want to address this cut through traffic issue?
Council- I sure hope your asking staff about this one and will act accordingly.
Our beaches and parks survived another holiday weekend, which inevitably means spirited competition for every parking space, picnic table and patch of sand under the sun.
ReplyDeleteTo stake out a spot, folks arrive earlier every year. On the Fourth of July, families rise before daybreak. That's also the best way to find a trash can that's not overflowing, or a bathroom that isn't flooded.
The simple truth is our public spaces can't keep pace with our population. We have more picnic blankets than grass.
So it's hard to believe that anyone could visit scenic Mission Bay Park, a workhorse of the city park system and a darned nice place to fly a kite, and think: “What this place really needs is another big old honkin' hotel in it.”
Believe it. Somewhere, someone with more juice than you is thinking something just like that.
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It's not clear who, says Rich Bessell, the incoming chairman of the Mission Bay Park Committee. “It's those shadowy figures,” he joked.
But Bessell is dead serious. He says he subscribes to the Reasonable Man Law, under which, in the absence of information, a prudent person employs common sense to decipher what's really going down.
After watching the latest maneuverings at City Hall, the Reasonable Man in him concludes a plan is afoot to give over more of Mission Bay Park to commercial uses – which means less for public ones.
“Sometimes you get a feeling,” he said, “a sense that something's going on, but you can't put your finger on it.”
The history of Mission Bay has been marked by clashes between commercial interests and park enthusiasts.
The latest came two weeks ago, when the City Council was set to amend the city charter to define wetlands as “water” and not “land.” The item was postponed for 60 days at the request of Mayor Jerry Sanders and some park lessees.
The land vs. water argument is important for this reason: In 1987, we passed a ballot measure declaring, in part, that “all leases in Mission Bay Park shall not exceed 25 percent of the total dedicated land area . . . ”
At the time, the city did not consider wetlands land. Now it does, and that means more land to lease to developers.
The 1987 measure was designed to hold the line against “repeated and incessant efforts” to build new hotels on Mission Bay, its primary sponsor said. With no formal opposition, it passed overwhelmingly.
But nothing is sacrosanct when there's a buck to be made.
The first attempt to tinker with the 25 percent formula came in 1999. Then-City Attorney Casey Gwinn issued an opinion that the term “all leases” did not apply to nonprofit leases. He failed after Donna Frye, then the leader of Surfers Tired Of Pollution, exposed his confused logic.
The second came when a republished Mission Bay Master Plan added 31 phantom acres to the park's existing leases, thereby enlarging the figure previously declared the “practical maximum” for development. Frye, by now a councilwoman, again blew the whistle. Bruce Herring, a deputy city manager, claimed it was an honest mistake.
Anyone who's followed the City Hall scandals of this period is familiar with the names Gwinn and Herring. If mistakes are a measure of honesty, those two were saints.
As a result of Herring's miscalculations, the council realized it did not know the park's true size, so it hired a survey firm. Four days later, that firm merged with a firm under contract to SeaWorld, the park's largest lessee, which was then seeking to expand. In some cities this would be considered a conflict. Here it was considered a coincidence.
The survey added nearly 27 acres of land to the park (“A survey miracle!” Frye declared) by including parts of roads and parcels previously thought to lie outside its boundaries. It also followed the mean high tide line to divide two wetlands, the San Diego River and a marsh preserve, into water and land.
Frye was ticked off about the survey the day it was published. Last year she set out to do something about it.
First, she sought an opinion from the city attorney on whether wetlands should be characterized as water or land. The short answer: Water. That's how they're regulated under the Clean Water Act.
Then, two weeks ago, Frye attempted to amend the charter to reflect that opinion.
In seeking a delay, a Sanders aide said time was needed to assess the amendment's impact on, among other things, city “revenue streams.” The park is the only one in the city that operates in the black.
Frye was indignant, and still is: “This does not seem controversial to me. Water is water. Things are what they are.”
Bessell agrees. “If you stand on it and you sink, it's probably not land,” he said. “Why is it that some people have an objection to the San Diego River not being classified as land? There is a reason for that.”
Frye and Bessell suspect financial powers are behind this, but aren't speculating about the identity.
As for me, I'm certain they aren't the sort of people who, on holiday weekends, have to compete for a spot on the grass.
Really looking forward to summer.
ReplyDeleteI live in SeaBluff on 101 in Leucadia. Once summer hits trying to get out of SeaBluff is like running the gauntlet.