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Supes accept CE map, question traffic numbers
By Christy Scott
The Alpine Sun
SAN DIEGO — The San Diego County Board
of Supervisors voted on Aug. 2 to accept the Circulation Element
map of the General Plan 2020 update, which will dictate roads in
the unincorporated parts of the county, including Alpine and the
Back Country.
After months of planning, discussion and computer
simulated traffic studies, the county’s planning commission
referred the road network plan to the supervisors for approval.
Representatives of most of the county’s 26
unincorporated town advisory planning or sponsor groups weighed
in on the road plan at a July 29, planning commission hearing
and vote.
Many planning groups okayed the plan, but not everybody
is happy about it; a road-network proposal that would govern the
way roads all over the county — with the exception of freeways —
will be built and improved. In Alpine, planning group members
have struggled to handle projected growth and retain the rural
character of the town.
The county’s estimates for population and business
growth for Alpine were contradicted by many APG members, who
believed that the numbers were too large and offered a skewed
view of circulation projections in the area.
Numbers expected by the full build-out of the draft
land-use map, which was approved by supervisors last year, show
more than 37,000 daily car trips on portions of Tavern Road
north of the I-8 interchange. Planning group members, and
residents, however, have constantly questioned that estimate and
the land use designations in the area.
As part of the approval, supervisors directed the county
Department of Planning and Land Use to re-examine traffic and
population numbers on the section of Tavern Road, north of I-8.
In some instances, GP2020 planners have had to adjust
previously approved land-use density maps when traffic models
projected that the traffic would be congested nearby.
As per the county’s standards, a lower density or
land-use designation creates fewer average daily trips and
changes the traffic modeling outcomes.
Traffic is measured on a scale of, level of service A
through F. GP2020 planners are striving to achieve an LOS D or
better on the unincorporated area roads.
In Alpine, the Tavern Road interchanges are currently
operating at level F, and the majority of Alpine Boulevard,
between Tavern and South Grade, operates at level E.
Alpine Boulevard is currently built out to two lanes
with intermittent turn lanes, but the current classification is
for a four-lane road down the middle of Alpine. As part of the
new map, the boulevard has been downgraded to a light collector,
which would mean two lanes with a raised median.
This downgrade would retain some of the rural feel of
Alpine’s main drag, but would leave the road operating at a
level E or F service. Planners predict that more than 19,000
daily trips on the road.
Overall, supervisors had praise for county staffers’
work on the plan, which took months to piece together with
computer simulations and hundreds of meetings with residents,
planning and sponsor groups, all over the county.
The circulation element proposal makes changes to 600
individual roads in the unincorporated part of the county to
accommodate traffic coming from new homes and businesses.
Planners said that it would leave 90 percent of county roads
with acceptable congestion levels.
Planner say it could slash “billions of dollars” off
the cost of what the county of might have to spend to build,
widen, or otherwise improve local roads. And officials say it
will still build a road network capable of adequately handling
future traffic in the unincorporated county.
This step is just the latest chapter in the now
eight-year-long saga of the county’s attempt to overhaul what it
has called its “obsolete” building and development guidelines.
The road network is the third and last major element of
the proposed overhaul that is expected to create a completed
General Plan 2020 plan by late 2007.
Supervisors, who have the final say over the plan, have
already given tentative approval to plans that would decide
where, and how many, homes, shopping centers, office and
industrial buildings could be built within the unincorporated
county’s 3,525 square miles.
The next step for planners will be to proceed on the
remaining phases of the project, including the regional land
use, housing, circulation, conservation, parks and open space,
safety, and noise elements, the community and sub-regional
plans, and the draft EIR.
To view the GP2020 Circulation Element maps for your
community click
HERE.
 E-mail
Christy Scott
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