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The Canadians have a saying that 75 percent of all traffic problems are created by bad community planning. Nowhere is that truth more evident than along Interstate 15 in San Diego County. When that freeway was built, it was not congested, even at rush hours. Even though San Diego City Council members and county supervisors knew there would never be a parallel freeway built to serve that corridor, they approved residential and other developments that would overload I-15. Transportation agencies now are trying to do something to diminish the adverse effects of those ill-advised planning decisions.
As far as increasing the capacity of the freeway to carry cars is concerned, the present plans call for adding discontinuous lanes along much of I-15 between Escondido and San Diego. Those would be merging lanes between the interchanges, that is to say, auxiliary lanes between the bridges which carry thoroughfares across I-15. Lengthening such bridges would be very expensive; and not enough state and federal money is available. Hence the new lanes cannot be continuous. However the merging lanes will help by improving the flow of traffic on the freeway.
Some other modest relief is in the works. The completion of State Route 56 will take traffic off I-15 south of Ted Williams Parkway and also will, to a degree, alleviate congestion on Mira Mesa Boulevard and Miramar Road.
The San Diego Association of Governments still has in its long-term plans the extension of State Route 125 from Santee to the east side of Poway. The original plan called for SR-125 to be built northward through Poway to converge with I-15. That would have done much to take traffic off I-15, but the city of Poway insisted on the deletion of the SR-125 extension within its city limits. In any case, the project is not one for which sufficient funds will be available for many years, if ever.
The main reason for the shortage in transportation funds is that successive state administrations have opposed any increase in the motor vehicle fuel tax. Jerry Brown, as governor, took that position 20 years ago. When I was a state senator, he opposed a bill of mine to raise those taxes. George Deukmejian agreed to an increase, but only if the voters would approve it. The voters did, but the money so raised was not enough to offset increases in the costs of highway construction and maintenance. Pete Wilson consistently opposed any increase in gasoline taxes. What Gray Davis will do in this regard is yet to be seen. Unfortunately, the freeways of this state now are growing old and are in need of expensive repairs and rehabilitation. Hence the need for more highway funds to solve the problems of congestion on California's highways.
Improvements in transit service may be achievable because the money for them can be taken out of other federal, state, and local pockets. Such funds are available, but are somewhat limited, so it does not appear to be possible to build any kind of railway on the I-15 corridor in the foreseeable future. Presently Sandag, the North County Transit District and the San Diego Metropolitan Transit Development Board and the state Department of Transportation are jointly involved in a major study to consider what can be done with federal, state, and local transit funds.
The most promising option involves adding lanes to the present high-occupancy vehicle right of way. The purpose is to allow buses and automobiles with two or more occupants to move freely in both directions all day long, rather than just in one direction and only in rush hours. Widening the HOV lanes also would serve reverse commute traffic, which has been increasing steadily in the last few years. ("Reverse commute traffic" refers to people who reside in San Diego and East County and South Bay and who work in Miramar, Mira Mesa, Poway and points north.)
These new lanes would be available to cars with more than one occupant as well as single drivers who opt to pay for the privilege. However, the main reason for expanding the HOV lanes has to do with improving public transit. In East San Diego, where the missing link of I-15 is nearing completion, bus station platforms are built right into the freeway. This will allow passengers to get off the buses on University Avenue and El Cajon Boulevard and walk down ramps to buses that will run on the high-occupancy-vehicle lanes in the middle of the freeway. Pull-out lanes would allow buses to stop for passengers without holding up traffic. The developing plan calls for extending the same sort of public access to express bus services all the way up to Escondido. In those cases, bus stations would be built adjacent to I-15 at major cross streets and connected to the carpool lanes by direct access ramps. While intended to allow for transfers to local bus services, the configuration's additional benefit would be to allow the drivers of cars on the HOV lanes to get on and off at all major intersections.
The northbound freeway bus service will branch out onto surface streets in Poway, Rancho Bernardo, Rancho Penasquitos and Escondido, providing feeder services which will turn into express runs when those buses roll onto the freeway.
To repeat, at major arterials, like Mira Mesa Boulevard and Miramar Road, new bus station facilities along the freeway would allow buses to pull off so passengers could alight and catch city buses that serve areas of high employment. The homeward movement in the afternoon would be accommodated by the same services in reverse. Local buses would deliver employees from their jobs to the stations along the freeway. Lockers for bicycles would be available free at the stations. Bicycles are a practical way to get around in areas where streets are congested with cars at rush hours.
One question not yet resolved relates to Qualcomm Stadium. To serve it with the I-15 express transit service, it may be necessary to build new off-and-on ramps to get the buses to and from the stadium and its trolley station. That railway station would be increasingly important as the trolley connects east up Mission Valley to San Diego State, La Mesa and El Cajon, sometime after the year 2002.
Proposed plans have most of the southbound I-15 bus service going through East San Diego via the extension now under construction. Some of those buses will turn west onto State Route 94 to go Downtown, while the rest head into the South Bay. Other north- and southbound buses will leave the freeway on Mira Mesa Boulevard and Miramar Road to go west toward the Golden Triangle.
Public transit service can play a part in improving the lives of some people who live and work in the I-15 corridor. It is one approach to the problem that looks achievable early in the 21st century.
However, in the long term, traffic congestion everywhere in San Diego County will worsen significantly unless more judicious planning policies are adopted by the cities and the county. If present trends continue, gridlock will become prevalent upon some sections of all of our freeways. A recent Sandag study pointed out that all developable land in the county will be full of houses by the year 2020 if uncontrolled urban sprawl continues, and conditions on the freeways here will be worse than they are in Los Angeles.
The study correctly concludes that future development should be more dense and be laid out to make public transit more accessible to residents. In short, local governments should try to make transit in San Diego more like that in Paris, London and Munich, rather than like that in Los Angeles, San Jose and Phoenix.
The objections to such policy changes usually involve references to the average American's love for the automobile. Actually, for too many people, what started out as a love affair has turned into a shotgun marriage.
A historian, former curator of the Serra Museum and author of "San Diego, Where California Began," James R. Mills served in the California Legislature from 1961 to 1982, notably as Senate pro tempore, from 1971 to 1980, chaired Amtrak in 1981 and chaired MTDB from 1986 to 1994.
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