Senate Bill 468 and SANDAG RTP 2050
Steven Goetsch
Two extremely important issues regarding transportation in San Diego County are now at the boiling point:
A number of us met with Deanna Spehn, Policy Director for Senator Christine Kehoe earlier this week. Senator Kehoe’s bill SB 468 passed the State Senate on
Wednesday and will now be considered by the State Assembly.
Deanna told us that this bill was a direct result of the public hearings that CAFÉ, PLAGUE I-5 and the Sierra Club (as well as others) sponsored last fall to express
our opposition to the expansion of I-5 in North San Diego County. Senator Kehoe shared our concerns and had discussions last fall with Caltrans and SANDAG that
were not successful in moderating their position. She therefore wrote and introduced SB 468. The bill DOES NOT STOP the expansion of I-5 in San Diego County but
it does quite a lot.
The bill first proposed regulation of all coastal freeways in California, but later became a “district bill” just affecting San Diego County. If enacted into law it would do
a number of things:
1) Restrict the number of “takings” of private property from 421 parcels to 10, some of them not occupied by buildings
2) Permit construction of two High Occupancy Toll (HOT) lanes from Manchester north to Camp Pendleton in the first 10 years of the project
3) Restrict construction to four 10-year “cycles”, each of which has mandatory mass transit and environmental mitigation goals which must be met concurrently
4) Ultimately two more HOT lanes would be permitted in the corridor, making a total of four HOT lanes from roughly the 5/805 merge to Camp Pendleton
5) The bus routes with gigantic Direct Access Ramps (such as the one looming over the San Dieguito Lagoon) would not be built
Caltrans has promised to announce a “preferred alternative” this month and it almost certainly would be the “8 plus 4 with buffer” (the smallest of the four DEIR
alternatives Caltrans proposed last year). Caltrans has also promised to rewrite their terrible Draft EIR and re-circulate it this fall for additional comments
For many of us this is a “glass half full” proposition. Although Caltrans and SANDAG negotiated with Senator Kehoe on the current draft of this bill they did so only
because they had no choice. The SANDAG Board of Directors is rabidly pro-freeway, and some labor unions have also opposed this bill because they apparently
favor highway construction over mass transit construction. Passage of SB 468 is far from assured.
Please express your support and/or comments to Deanna Spehn at deanna...@sen.ca.gov or to Senator Kehoe at senato...@sen.ca.gov
It is also VITAL to write comments to SANDAG on the Regional Transportation Plan 2050. Send comments by the June 30 deadline to: 205...@sandag.org
A Public Workshop on RTP 2050 will be held at the Encinitas Community and Senior Center, 1140 Oakcrest Park Drive on Tuesday, June 7 from 4 to 7PM.
The Public Hearing (where speakers are permitted) begins at 6PM. Please try to be there.
Steve Goetsch
Solana Beach, CA