In September, Peninsula Community Planning Board adopted a preferred alternative for bicycle improvements on Wabaska Drive, as well as getting an update on San Diego International Airport redevelopment.
Nicole Burgess, District 2 rep on the City of San Diego Bicycle Advisory Committee, gave a presentation detailing four different options for bicycle improvements on Wabaska Drive between Voltaire Street and Nimitz Boulevard.
“These design options are for the road diet bringing it down from four lanes to two,” said Burgess. “We wanted space to put a bike facility, and not just have bikes on the outside of parked cars in a typical bike lane.”
Burgess noted two options, numbers three and four, “put bikes on the inside making the vehicles be the buffer, so the bicyclist does not have to go next to fast-moving traffic.”
Protected bike lanes have some sort of physical, stationary, vertical separation between moving motor-vehicle traffic and the bike lane.
“For Wabaska, this physical barrier will be a variety of parked cars, bollards, flex posts, and maybe even some planters,” Burgess said noting an unprotected bike path “is just paint and has no physical barrier. In these types of facilities, cyclists must ride next to moving vehicles and be cautious of door-zone conflicts. A protected bikeway is safer, more comfortable, and therefore increases bike ridership.”
“We are supporting options 3 or 4 to provide a protection there,” concluded Burgess, adding, “There really aren’t that many homes in that area.”
Burgess said it’s hoped introducing bike improvements on Wabaska will “provide a model for the city.” She noted the bicycle infrastructure improvement project will dovetail neatly into railing and other improvements being planned on the Voltaire Street bridge nearby.
A motion was made to approve option 4 and PCPB’s vote was 9-2-1 in favor. Keith Wilschetz, director of airport planning and noise mitigation at San Diego County Regional Airport Authority, updated community planners on a long-range $2.2 billion replacement plan, approved about a year ago, at the airport’s Terminal 1, opened in 1967. The plan is to replace all of that terminal’s 19 gates within 10 years, adding more capacity in future phases.
From the audience, Dr. Lilah Schmidt expressed fear, following testimony given at a recent Airport Authority board meeting, that airport arrivals are going to be overwhelming, increasing by several hundred thousand during the next few years.
Wilschetz replied the airport has approximately 314,000 arrivals annually today noting “that will go up to 800,000 between now and 2025, about a 120 percent increase, just over double what we have today” utilizing the airport’s lone airplane runway, he said. In other action:
• Jack Straw from the mayor’s office fielded group and audience questions about proposed changes to the city’s municipal code governing the 30-foot height restriction in the coastal area.
Work on a controversial condominium development on Emerson Street in Roseville was recently temporarily halted, because area residents complained the project had an extra story, exceeded 30 feet, because of the way its height was measured, which constituted a loophole in city regulations.
meant to protect the 30-foot building height ceiling.