Breaking News: CalTrans selects smallest expansion as "Preferred Alternative"
Steve Goetsch
Great news from Caltrans today!! To be officially announced at a press conference tomorrow: The unlawful Draft Environmental Impact Report published by Caltrans
last July (with four alternatives, none listed as "preferred") has now been clarified. Caltrans will propose the "8 + 4 with Buffer" alternative, the smallest of the four.
This means thatpotentially hundreds of the 421 parcels that were imperiled are now off the "endangered" list. Caltrans has also promised to re-circulate a new DEIR later this year.
This is a tremendous victory for all of us who believe that this expansion was way too large and too invasive. It still envisions FOUR NEW LANES but construction
will be in four 10 year phases (probably not beginning before 2013 or 2014) with two HOT lanes from Manchester Boulevard in Encinitas north to Oceanside.
I hope that all of us will turn out for future Caltrans and CAFE/I-5 PLAGUE/Sierra Club meetings and express our feelings on this much smaller plan. The best freeway
expansion to many of us is no expansion at all.
Last summer I told reporters it was "David versus and army of Goliaths". Well one of the Goliaths just blinked!
REGION: Caltrans says it will build four new lanes on I-5, not six
South bound heading traffic on I-5 north of La Costa Blvd in Carlsbad. JAMIE SCOTT LYTLE | jly...@nctimes.com
Interstate 5 in North County will be widened by four lanes ---- not six ---- state transportation officials announced on Wednesday.
Plans for the expansion, which have been in the works for a decade, had called for up to six new lanes from La Jolla to Camp Pendleton to ease the interstate's growing gridlock.
For much of the past year, critics of the project, including state Sen. Christine Kehoe, D-San Diego, pushed for limits on the widening. Kehoe introduced a bill in February that, in its initial form, called for mass transit projects to be built before any further freeway expansion on I-5.
The bill was later softened considerably. It currently supports the expansion on I-5 by four express lanes only. Those lanes would be restricted to buses, carpools, vanpools and solo drivers willing to pay a fee.
Last year, the San Diego Association of Governments, the region's planning agency, endorsed plans for a six-lane expansion for much of the 27-mile project area.
Some leaders on its board of directors, which includes county and city elected leaders from across the region, had said they did not want to handcuff the project in any way.
Kehoe praised the decision.
"This is a good solution," she said Wednesday. "It provides for I-5 expansion in the narrowest rights of way, reducing environmental impacts and saving homes."
Check back at www.nctimes.com and in Thursday's North County Times for more on this developing story.
Contact staff writer Chris Nichols
Steve Goetsch
Solana Beach, California
