The Traffic Fiasco and Its Impact on Community Safety
The mayor’s abuse of Mira Mesa in 2022 provides an example of the mayor’s many faults. These include false goals, inexperience, lack of judgment, arrogance, evasion. Also “zoning madness” and ignoring needed infrastructure.
The experience of one community for one year illustrates many of Todd Gloria’s serious shortcomings.
The Gold Coast Drive project and the Community Plan Update, both in Mira Mesa in 2022, were planning disasters which show bad leadership in action.
Todd Fault #1. False goals. The mayor has fallen under the sway of urban extremists. They don’t want “Complete Streets”, they want to make driving difficult. They are willing to cause traffic delays and endanger residents, in their zeal to add bike lanes without prudent planning. The Gold Coast Drive project started with an edict from the mayor to add bike lanes, with NO community input.
Todd Fault #2. Inexperienced advisors. Prudent people would not attempt to add bike lanes on a street without adequate space. Gold Coast Drive was chosen by the mayor’s advisors, even though it wasn’t wide enough for bike lanes. Their solution: eliminate one driving lane, so that drivers would meet head-on, in one lane.
The advisors found a road system which had been tried in other places. It’s called Advisory Bike Lanes (ABL) or Edge Lanes. After the dangerous project in Mira Mesa was abandoned, it was acknowledged that the system works only for rural roads and small towns, where the traffic volume is low, under 3000 daily trips. Yet Gold Coast Drive is a heavily used street with 7,500 daily trips.
Todd Fault #3. Lack of Judgment. The crazy ideas from the Mayor’s Office come from “Cut and Paste Planning”, where systems that worked in some other location are assumed to work in San Diego. How naïve is that?
Todd Fault #4. Arrogance. This word is frequently associated with Todd Gloria and his henchmen. The head-on traffic lane is an example. The thinking was: “We’ll restripe Gold Coast Drive at night, and in the morning we’ll let the residents figure out how to drive in both directions using one lane. If they can’t figure it out, they can take a different street, or stay home!”
Todd Fault #5. Evasion. The residents created an outcry, and the Transportation staff had to acknowledge that the “one lane” plan was unworkable for this high-traffic street.
Did Todd Gloria admit that he and his staff had made a mistake? No! The mayor said that the project wasn’t “rolled out” properly; not enough “education” had been done.
It was discouraging to find that the mayor would not admit the mistake: The “one lane” plan was not feasible for a busy street like Gold Coast Drive.
Todd Fault #6. Discredited theories led to an excessive Community Plan.
After the debacle on Gold Coast Drive in April 2022, the mayor wasn’t done with abusing the people of Mira Mesa. The mayor and his servants in the Planning Department forged ahead relentlessly on a Community Plan Update which was opposed by the Planning Group and the residents who had attended years of meetings.
The proposed changes to the Mira Mese community plan were extreme, authorizing enough housing to add 65,000 more residents! It was upzoning madness. The capacity which was added, in potential housing units and population, was equal to the forecast for the entire city!
The mayor and his Planning Department claimed that a large increase in housing units would lead to more affordability. Yet many professional studies report that this isn’t true. San Diego is a desirable place to live, so market-rate housing is more expensive than in other parts of the country. The “trickle down” theory has been discredited.
The Community Planning Group tried to interject a sense of proportion and reasonableness, to no avail. One planning group leader at the end of the project summarized the “Community Engagement” this way: “The city staff just proceeded to do what they wanted, while thanking us for our input.”
Todd Fault #7. Ignoring needed infrastructure. In the 1970’s and 1980’s, Mira Mesa grew rapidly. New development was approved and built, without the needed street improvements, parks and libraries. Residents and businesses suffered. City officials acknowledged the problem, and created new systems to ensure needed public facilities and infrastructure. They vowed to provide infrastructure at the time of new development.
Yet in 2022, mayor Todd Gloria and his staff broke that promise.
After years of meetings, the mayor and staff ignored the carefully written letter from the Community Planning Group. They ignored all 13 items, which identified the public facilities and infrastructure which were needed, but missing from the plan.
The mayor, his aides and his planning staff ignored history, ignored the pleas of the community, violated accepted planning principles, and repeated the mistakes of the past. As William Henry Vanderbilt said, “The public be damned.”
Todd Fault #8. Deception. Under Mayor Todd Gloria, we have compliant department managers working at the direction of an unprincipled leader.
The Parks & Recreation Board expressed their disagreement with the proposed Mira Mesa plan. Particularly disturbing was the 3100 point deficit in parks. That was equivalent to no park facilities for 31,000 residents!
The citizen-led Parks and Rec Board adopted a resolution to approve the plan update “with the incorporation”of the Community Planning Group recommendations. Those included adding enough new parks to eliminate the planned 3100 point deficit.
Brazenly, the Planning Dept falsified the resolution from the Parks and Rec Board. In their Staff report to the Planning Commission and City Council, the planning staff altered the resolution to state “consider the incorporation” of the planning group recommendations. That entirely changed the meaning of the Parks and Rec board members, which was that the Community Planning Group could not be ignored, and their recommendations needed to be incorporated in the plan before it was finalized.
Sources:
- Minutes of the Parks & Recreation Board meeting, October 2022.
- Letter from the Mira Mesa Community Planning Group to the city, Nov. 17, 2022.
- Planning Department Staff Report, November 2022.
The lesson from Mira Mesa:
The Mira Mesa street debacle, the excessive plan update, and other recent Community Plan Updates forced through by mayor Todd Gloria, will result in worsening traffic, overburdened parks, the loss of existing affordable housing, and incompatible projects. The overall result will be a reduced quality of life for residents, and negative impacts on businesses.
The Planning Commissioners and Councilmembers need to review the mayor’s plans more carefully, and reject bad plans which are based on discredited theories and deceptive reports. And, of course, the Office of the Mayor needs an overhaul.