Road Diet nightmare

Monday night (6pm) is the Planning Commission hearing on the Coast Highway Corridor plan. (Wednesday 2pm is the Council hearing to enact the Short-Term Rental Ordinance).

The Coast Highway plan includes two part: the Incentive District and the Road Diet. The Incentive District would provide density and a look in South O that would make it more like downtown. South O is not downtown: it has been an economic success without such a plan, and local business owners would like to keep it that way.

The Road Diet Nightmare

The Road Diet would shrink Coast from 4 lanes to 2. South O lacks and will continue to lack the transit density of downtown, and thus for decade it will continue to be dependent on automobiles — whether electric, hybrid, fuel cell, natural gas or gasoline — and whether self-driving, shared or private.

Whatever its merits for downtown, here are 5 reasons what the road diet would be a disaster for South O:

1. Traffic Nightmares. As the “pilot project” road diet has shown, eliminating half the traffic lanes in South O will bring traffic to a standstill at rush hour and summer weekend months, making it difficult for residents and visitors to enter and exit our community and diverting traffic onto side streets of South O residential neighborhoods. According to the city’s data, a full road diet will only make it worse.
2. Against Federal Guidelines. In 2014, the Federal Highway Administration published a Road Diet Information Guide. The existing — let alone projected — traffic levels exceed the range that the FHWA says is “probably feasible” for a road diet.
3. Consistent Resident Opposition. The residents of South O have consistently voted to oppose having a road diet south of Oceanside Blvd — including the 400 petition signatures of Oceanside residents that we presented to the council in October 2016 (attached), and more than 70 people who turned out to oppose it at a community meeting held January 3.
4. Safety and Emergency Access. Coast Highway is a major ingress/egress route for all of South O, including for tsunami evacuation from the lagoon and from the “Dip”. The importance of such emergency access will only increase if Caltrans closes (as it is threatening to do) the Cassidy Street onramps and offramps.
5. Economic Impact. The city’s EIR fails to examine the economic impact of the Road Diet on the South O merchants, who depend on auto-based visitors for their livelihood. A similar Road Diet on Venice Blvd. in Los Angeles brought the closing of 15 businesses. The Board of Directors of the South Oceanside Business District has voted unanimously to oppose any Road Diet South of Oceanside Blvd.

Because of this, as we have done consistently over the last three years, Save South O and the residents of South Oceanside ask for no road diet South of Oceanside Blvd.

Moving Forward

Over the past 30 years, South O has been redeveloped with private risk taking and private investment to make our community a unique attraction within Oceanside and North County. We are not downtown — we lack the infrastructure and other attractions that have been used to justify the Coast Highway Vision north of Wisconsin.

If (we hope when) this plan is rejected for South O, the residents and merchants of South Oceanside — organized by the South Oceanside Business District and Save South O — intend to continue to work with the city to develop improvements suitable for our community. This includes completing the rail trail, adding suitable pedestrian crosswalks, and beautifying storefronts.

Unlike downtown, South Oceanside residents and merchants are strongly opposed to this plan — as we have been for the past three years. The latest staff proposal ignores both our repeated substantive input and also the community wishes in continuing to threaten our community with these drastic (and inappropriate) changes.

We ask the Planning Commission to either reject the Coast Highway plan, or to approve an option that

• does not include any Road Diet south of Oceanside Blvd.;
• modifies the incentive district in consultation with South O between Oceanside and Morse prior to the Council vote; and
• deletes any incentive district south of Morse.