For more than two years now, the Mission Beach community has been trying to get the city to add a third lane and move a center median along the southbound Mission Boulevard to help traffic flow. The street bottlenecks at West Mission Bay Drive. With thousands of visitors flooding Mission Beach every summer, the intersection becomes a driver’s nightmare. Compounded by a lack of parking, cars back up for blocks along the two-lane southbound Mission Boulevard, according to Mission Beach Precise Planning Committee Chair Richard Miller. He said a third lane would be a tremendous benefit. “We’ve been pushing for it,” Miller said. “It’s a high priority for people living here but it’s not for the city.” Miller added that removing or narrowing the center median would also help relieve some congestion. The planning committee approved the initial project in 2006 and forwarded their recommendations to the City Council. In June 2007, the City Council voted to set aside $150,000 to install a traffic signal at the intersection to help alleviate the problem. But the community is still waiting. And with summer right around the corner, Miller and others in the community want to know what’s taking so long. Senior Traffic Engineer for the City, Gary Pence, said the project has expanded to include changing the traffic signal timing to help alleviate the congestion, accounting for some of the delay. Projected costs total approximately $250,000, according to James Nagelvoort, a deputy director of the project implementation and technical services division of the Department of Engineering and Capital Projects. Nagelvoort said the project is still in design. “The money is going to be there,” he said. “We’re working on moving the final construction dollars.” Those must be some heavy dollars because the project isn’t expected to be completed until Memorial Day 2010, according to staff. Until then, the community will have to deal with another summer of Mission Boulevard bottlenecks.