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HurricaneHugo Sep 28, 2019 8:30 AM

SANDAG reaches a compromise on their budget

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/sep/2...t-highway-pro/

Will O' Wisp Sep 28, 2019 8:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HurricaneHugo (Post 8700863)
SANDAG reaches a compromise on their budget

https://www.kpbs.org/news/2019/sep/2...t-highway-pro/

"Compromise" is a fun way to put it.

SANDAG is in a really bad state right now tbh. Ikahara has lost just about all his credibility with the Board of Directors. He's got a bit of a prickly personality and a tenancy avoid telling others what his plans are. That came back to bite him hard with this budget proposal, the details of which he didn't reveal until the last minute, meaning that it was too late to study any alternate proposals. When the Directors instead decided to sidestep SANDAG staff and come up with their own proposal, he could say he thought it would probably get thrown out by the state environmental board for increasing VMT, but without study there was no firm evidence either way. A good portion of the board perceived it as trying to force their hands, preventing study of concepts other than his own preferred option so that Ikahara could claim that "based on his experience" anything else would fail in Sacramento.

It's hard to evaluate if that's really true or not, but it's what a lot of the Directors seem to believe. The mayor of Chula Vista said when she walked into the meeting she was prepared to vote for Ikahara's budget, but when she heard that that his argument fell down entirely to his opinion on what Sacramento would support and appeals to his credentials, she abstained instead. The mayor of Escondido even went so far as to tell Ikahara "You're not mayor of San Diego County". For everyone else here, that's kinda like your boss telling you "You're not the owner of this company".

The real tragedy here is that now we have no idea if the proposal we're sending to Sacramento will be rejected, which has some serious implications for the proposed SD Grand Central at the NAVWAR site. The Navy was pretty clear when they started out the whole point of RFPing the site out to a private developer was to avoid getting funding entangled in politics, but SANDAG made an offer too juicy to ignore. So the Navy laid out an extremely tight 18 month timeline for SANDAG to get project approval, funding, development patners etc. For a project with this level of complexity that's pretty insane. For it to even have a chance in hell of succeeding it requires that all the state and federal approving bodies give their sign offs promptly and without dispute. If approval of the regional transportation plan is delayed by just three months, SANDAG's MOU with the Navy will collapse and the Navy will have the option of looking elsewhere to redevelop the site. But then there's certainly been a few implications that Ikahara was trying to ram through a budget he knew Sacramento would love, even if the Directors didn't, just to avoid that very outcome. But if that were true he certainly can't say it, because using that as a justification would acknowledgment that the NAVWAR site had already been selected without public meetings or an open vote by the elected officials of the board, in violation of the Brown Act...

Or maybe SANDAG staff is too busy to keep the Directors updated on every last thing they do. They certainly don't have a lot of free time to hang out anymore :(

https://i.imgur.com/Aix5RoB.png

Also the SDSU Mission Valley EIR was released. Enjoy.

SDCAL Sep 29, 2019 12:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Will O' Wisp (Post 8701232)
"Compromise" is a fun way to put it.

SANDAG is in a really bad state right now tbh. Ikahara has lost just about all his credibility with the Board of Directors. He's got a bit of a prickly personality and a tenancy avoid telling others what his plans are.

The mayor of Escondido even went so far as to tell Ikahara "You're not mayor of San Diego County". For everyone else here, that's kinda like your boss telling you "You're not the owner of this company".

SANDAG has been in a really bad state for years, well before Ikahara.

They’ve been incompetent on many fronts and are rarely able to stick with their long term plans.

The problem isn’t Ikahara, it’s that a County-wide agency like this has different interests on what transit should be like due to rural mayors and big city officials not seeing eye to eye. Ikahara is abrasive, but at least he’s modernizing the viewpoints of this agency. In all honesty as a resident of San Diego, I don’t want the mayor of Escondido making choices for what happens in my neighborhood. These rural mayors have their own interests and want car-centric plans which may be fine for their areas, but why are they dictating what happens in the city of SD? Nobody in the CITY of SD voted for Abed or the mayor of Santee or the mayor of Poway, etc. They don’t have the city of SD’s interests at heart, they have the interests of their own towns which are anti-transit.

SDfan Sep 30, 2019 8:41 PM

I like what Hasan brings to the table. He's completely scrambled the dysfunctional order we've had for decades, and running circles around the directors politically. Parochial NC and EC leaders are clutching their pearls and regionalism is on the rise—that's a good thing.

Will O' Wisp Oct 1, 2019 4:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SDCAL (Post 8701378)
SANDAG has been in a really bad state for years, well before Ikahara.

They’ve been incompetent on many fronts and are rarely able to stick with their long term plans.

The problem isn’t Ikahara, it’s that a County-wide agency like this has different interests on what transit should be like due to rural mayors and big city officials not seeing eye to eye. Ikahara is abrasive, but at least he’s modernizing the viewpoints of this agency. In all honesty as a resident of San Diego, I don’t want the mayor of Escondido making choices for what happens in my neighborhood. These rural mayors have their own interests and want car-centric plans which may be fine for their areas, but why are they dictating what happens in the city of SD? Nobody in the CITY of SD voted for Abed or the mayor of Santee or the mayor of Poway, etc. They don’t have the city of SD’s interests at heart, they have the interests of their own towns which are anti-transit.

SANDAG has certainly been messed up for as long as I've known it, I'll 100% agree with you there. But there's another segment to this story not getting reported by the press, probably because they don't understand it. So the narrative tends to be "car-centric North/East County fight against transit", which true as it may be leaves out that as of this moment they're winning. That's where Ikahara doesn't come out looking so great. A few points:

First, the SANDAG board just passed a budget more pro-freeway than it would've been under the previous long range plan. Expansions to the 78 and 67 have been moved up from 2035 and 2050 (respectively) to 2025. At this point, under Ikahara's watch we are actively going backward.

And second, the two largest cities in the region, San Diego and Chula Vista, both declined to oppose the measure. The City of SD voted for it, and Chula Vista abstained. And that's important because under a weight vote both in combination could have forced Ikahara's plan through. So while rural North and East County share a portion of the blame for this mess, the more decisive factor is urban Central and South County supporting or at least not opposing the former.

It's not like SD and Chula Vista can't override Escondido or Poway et al. The City of SD had repeatedly overturned attempts by North/East county to have SANDAG spar with the state housing commission, including a vote just last month to prioritize housing construction near transit. Ikahara himself was appointed over the objections of North/East county (who wanted someone who already worked at SANDAG). But for the regional transit plan they've bowed to rural concerns, over Ikahara's insistence that such actions could comprise future funding. The reason they've given for this, as stated by Chula Vista's mayor, is a personal distrust in Ikahara.

I'm an engineer, and so I have tenancy to focus on outcomes rather than motives. And the outcome of Ikahara's actions, regardless of his good motives, have been an increased prioritization of roadways. He was warned by a lot of people, even the outgoing governor, that the SANDAG board doesn't typically go for radical changes in regional planning. Instead of proposing a more gradual change, or going to Sacramento and getting them to say this or that won't be acceptable, he's been trying avoid the board altogether and push a Seattle-style transit system in a rather Robert Moses-like fashion. That's a problem because bureaucrats can't makes those sorts of broad, sweeping changes against opposition anymore. Minorities have a good deal more ability to organize (in this instance North/East county voters would be considered a minority, they make up ~25% of the county pop), and significant opposition could very easily kill any potential new funding for SANDAG.

So to keep a lid on the controversy the City of SD and Chula Vista have increasingly been side-stepping him, which puts North/East county at the advantage in negotiations because they're occurring in a vacuum with no hard data about how potential freeway expansions effect our climate goals. And that's lead to the rather poor "compromise" we're left with today.

Streamliner Oct 1, 2019 4:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by HurricaneHugo (Post 8699610)
Now that I commute to/from La Jolla...

Will the Regents bridge ever be built?

Seems like that would help traffic congestion a bit

They decided to scrap the Regents Road bridge idea. They'll use the money elsewhere:

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...304-story.html

Quote:

- San Diego has roughly $100 million to spend on projects in University City because of the decision not to build the Regents Road bridge.
- The money will likely be spent on smart stoplights, expanded libraries, new fire stations and park upgrades.
- The city will soon create a list of priority projects based on community input.

...

The fees have been collected since 1987 from developers based on how significantly their projects worsen traffic in University City, a notoriously congested area that includes the University of California San Diego and three freeways – state Route 52 and Interstates 5 and 805.

Some residents have speculated that developers would get their money back because the city decided not to build the bridge, but the money is not collected for specific projects.

The bridge and widening of Genesee had been conceived as projects that would reduce congestion by providing a crucial north-south route through the community.

But the City Council voted 6-2 in late 2016 to remove them from planning maps, citing environmental concerns and doubts the two projects would truly reduce congestion.

mello Oct 1, 2019 7:06 PM

North County is now Rural?
 
This is new to me. I am very familiar with the entire county having lived in both Central, and North County my whole life and I constantly explore and have friends living all over the county. My mother lives in Lake San Marcos and Father in Encinitas by beach. I've been driving Uber full time for a year now so I probably know the lay of the land of SD County as well as anyone.

What people don't understand about the 78 corridor for example is the geography doesn't allow for any major E/W thoroughfares. You should see the volume of cars on Leucadia Blvd which then morphs in to Rancho Santa Fe Rd and Palomar Airport Road which then becomes San Marcos Blvd. They are like defacto freeways during peak hours. I would hardly call these areas rural.

I scan the UT daily and also notice things driving around. Carlsbad, Vista, San Marcos, Escondido, and Oceanside are actually seeing quite a bit of development and holes are being filled in. I'm writing all this to say that I do believe the 78 should be widened. Tons of Temecula/Murrieta people use it go go westward and there has been a lot of job growth in Carlsbad over the last few years.

Have you seen Via Satt's new HQ at the corner of El Camino Real/Palomar Airport Rd? What about all the new office/distribution buildings on Faraday Rd in Carlsbad just north of Palomar? My point is Central SD has multiple E/W freeways and surfrace street avenues to service it. North County only has the 56 way on the South end (2 lanes each way) and 78 way on the North End (3 lanes each way) and very little in the way of wide E/W roads. The infrastructure is definitely strained.

Also after driving Uber for a year I'm a bit down on the future of transit. Ride sharing is so cheap and convenient. I'm open to discussing everything but look at how ridership in LA County is down even with tons of new light rail lines having opened lately.... I'm all for investing in transit but I'm going on the record saying 78 should be 4 lanes each way, 56 should be 3 each, and 52 3 each.

MN/WI Oct 2, 2019 11:28 PM

Love San Diego. Truly one of my favorite cities. Was on my top 3 places to move to after leaving the military.

SDfan Oct 2, 2019 11:29 PM

Calling what happened a win for NC/EC is a bit of a stretch, and no one working the politics of this has said that. If anything it was a token giveaway ("oh no, we have to plan for highways we don't have funding for to begin with and will likely be scraped when the state comes back and says these projects only increase VMT...no stop, don't fund highway project plans with money from other highway project plans")

Is it a waste of money and staff time? Yes. Does that mean that the greater regional movement toward a more balanced transportation system has stalled? Absolutely not.

I get the funding argument, 2/3rds is a tough threshold. But I think SANDAG is counting on the state to lower the threshold to 55% (failed this year, but it'll be back) and/or the political climate to change in San Diego (KF is on his way out and it's only looking blue from here on out). 2022/2024 will be a whole new world for SANDAG.

SD and CV put on some good kabuki theater last meeting, they'll likely keep it up to make the parochials feel like they still run the show until it's too late.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Will O' Wisp (Post 8703278)
SANDAG has certainly been messed up for as long as I've known it, I'll 100% agree with you there. But there's another segment to this story not getting reported by the press, probably because they don't understand it. So the narrative tends to be "car-centric North/East County fight against transit", which true as it may be leaves out that as of this moment they're winning. That's where Ikahara doesn't come out looking so great. A few points:

First, the SANDAG board just passed a budget more pro-freeway than it would've been under the previous long range plan. Expansions to the 78 and 67 have been moved up from 2035 and 2050 (respectively) to 2025. At this point, under Ikahara's watch we are actively going backward.

And second, the two largest cities in the region, San Diego and Chula Vista, both declined to oppose the measure. The City of SD voted for it, and Chula Vista abstained. And that's important because under a weight vote both in combination could have forced Ikahara's plan through. So while rural North and East County share a portion of the blame for this mess, the more decisive factor is urban Central and South County supporting or at least not opposing the former.

It's not like SD and Chula Vista can't override Escondido or Poway et al. The City of SD had repeatedly overturned attempts by North/East county to have SANDAG spar with the state housing commission, including a vote just last month to prioritize housing construction near transit. Ikahara himself was appointed over the objections of North/East county (who wanted someone who already worked at SANDAG). But for the regional transit plan they've bowed to rural concerns, over Ikahara's insistence that such actions could comprise future funding. The reason they've given for this, as stated by Chula Vista's mayor, is a personal distrust in Ikahara.

I'm an engineer, and so I have tenancy to focus on outcomes rather than motives. And the outcome of Ikahara's actions, regardless of his good motives, have been an increased prioritization of roadways. He was warned by a lot of people, even the outgoing governor, that the SANDAG board doesn't typically go for radical changes in regional planning. Instead of proposing a more gradual change, or going to Sacramento and getting them to say this or that won't be acceptable, he's been trying avoid the board altogether and push a Seattle-style transit system in a rather Robert Moses-like fashion. That's a problem because bureaucrats can't makes those sorts of broad, sweeping changes against opposition anymore. Minorities have a good deal more ability to organize (in this instance North/East county voters would be considered a minority, they make up ~25% of the county pop), and significant opposition could very easily kill any potential new funding for SANDAG.

So to keep a lid on the controversy the City of SD and Chula Vista have increasingly been side-stepping him, which puts North/East county at the advantage in negotiations because they're occurring in a vacuum with no hard data about how potential freeway expansions effect our climate goals. And that's lead to the rather poor "compromise" we're left with today.


Will O' Wisp Oct 6, 2019 12:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SDfan (Post 8705436)
Calling what happened a win for NC/EC is a bit of a stretch, and no one working the politics of this has said that. If anything it was a token giveaway ("oh no, we have to plan for highways we don't have funding for to begin with and will likely be scraped when the state comes back and says these projects only increase VMT...no stop, don't fund highway project plans with money from other highway project plans")

Is it a waste of money and staff time? Yes. Does that mean that the greater regional movement toward a more balanced transportation system has stalled? Absolutely not.

I get the funding argument, 2/3rds is a tough threshold. But I think SANDAG is counting on the state to lower the threshold to 55% (failed this year, but it'll be back) and/or the political climate to change in San Diego (KF is on his way out and it's only looking blue from here on out). 2022/2024 will be a whole new world for SANDAG.

SD and CV put on some good kabuki theater last meeting, they'll likely keep it up to make the parochials feel like they still run the show until it's too late.

I'm working the politics of this and I said it. Although in truth my involvement is mostly tangential.

All politics is theater, but this isn't quite kabuki. And the best proof of that are the potential consequences of this action.

I've already spoken on how this action could effect development at NAVWAR, so let me instead clarify what it means when people say "this is a waste of money". SANDAG is next to broke right now. This money, the money they have right now, that's all they'll have till they can bring up a ballot measure in 2022 (MTS is already planning a ballot measure in 2020 and there's worries that trying to do both right after one another with degrade voter enthusiasm). SANDAG can't even afford to study alternatives until that tax increase passes with the voters. When you add on the 1-2 years for design and engineering, and 2-3 years for environmental, you can see that the absolutely earliest a potential project not on this list could break ground is in the latter part of the coming decade.

So this is effectively ceding any chance of building new transit in North/East County for most of the 2020s. Note that Sacramento can't stop this, they can deny approval to the regional transportation plan and prevent SANDAG from getting outside money for these projects, but SANDAG can spend as much of its own money on CEQA studies of highway expansions (and not on transit) as it damn well pleases. That means close to another decade of auto-centric suburban development, the results of which will mean it will be even harder to transition to transit oriented urban development than today.

Of course then there's the effects this has on the regional plan itself. There's no question that the 67 and 78 expansions need to be included now, Ikahara would almost certainly be fired if he goes against the board in such a direct fashion (and then his replacement would put them in anyway). To compensate for these VMT inducing projects he has to find a way to increase transit ridership, which means spending more money on transit project, money that SANDAG doesn't really... have. That leave Ikahara two options: either send an extremely aggressive transit tax hike to the voters in 2022, or push those expensive transit projects off into the future and assume that SANDAG will find the money somehow.

The latter was how the previous regional plan worked, SANDAG included three new trolley lines in the 2040-2050 range despite there being no funding identified for them, more or less assuming (hoping?) voters would approve a transit tax sometime later. Ikahara has repeatedly said he considered that practice unethical, and his whole point of redoing the regional plan was to create something that wouldn't keep dodging the issue of VMT/GHG using paper projects that likely won't ever be built. But the temptation will be very, very great to do exactly that rather than trying to slap voters with transit taxes 6-7x higher right off the bat.

And then if Sacramento does indeed throw out the regional transportation plan after it's presented to them in 2021 because of that, as Ikahara at least believes is likely, then SANDAG can either try to litigate or start all over again. Litigation takes 2-3 years, a new plan takes ~2 years (during which SANDAG can't raise outside money unless Sacramento gives us an out like they did this year), and during either it would be a bad idea to go to the voters with a proposed transit tax. So now we're looking at adding an additional 3-5 years before SANDAG is on stable footing, assuming we don't just repeat this process all over again, and North/East County probably won't see a lick of new transit until the 2030s.

Just two more notes:
-Express lanes, like the ones that were just deleted from the budget, can decrease VMT. Because you can meter them to control flow, you can ensure buses in those lanes don't get stuck in traffic. Can't do that with HOV lanes, which makes them useless for transit.
-The 2/3rds threshold is laid out by Prop 13, it's part of the CA constitution. Can't be changed without a statewide vote.

Nv_2897 Oct 6, 2019 3:06 AM

Pinnacle International is proposing Park and C a 39 story mixed use tower
Civic SD: https://civicsd.com/wp-content/uploa...19_reduced.pdf

https://i.imgur.com/KTBMchA.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/WzebJvv.jpg

Steadfast Oct 7, 2019 7:05 AM

Can't say I like the drab design & color selection of that proposal... Looks like something out of the early 70's.
Hope it goes back for redesign.

spoonman Oct 7, 2019 6:07 PM

I actually like the 70’s office building look as a break from the glassy green/blue condo towers. Wouldn’t want 100’s of these but a few is nice variety.

PS: Is this the other site where Pinnacle was going to put 2 towers (besides the red and yellow towers) or is this in addition to the other 2 sites?

mello Oct 7, 2019 8:21 PM

We have some Pinnacle confusion
 
First of all Pinnacle needs to focus on actually building its current project that is "under construction". Has anyone else noticed that its site at 11th/E has been stalled for the last 2 or 3 months. It is completely unchanged, i drive uber so i see ot 2 or 3 times a week and it hasn't budged.

Spoon: the location im referring to is their other twin tower project. Then they have multiple other approvals around town but of course no ground breakings.

SDfan Oct 7, 2019 8:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mello (Post 8710033)
First of all Pinnacle needs to focus on actually building its current project that is "under construction". Has anyone else noticed that its site at 11th/E has been stalled for the last 2 or 3 months. It is completely unchanged, i drive uber so i see ot 2 or 3 times a week and it hasn't budged.

Spoon: the location im referring to is their other twin tower project. Then they have multiple other approvals around town but of course no ground breakings.

Definitely noticed the lag in construction there. They only just finished the second tower by fault line park. They've been a permitting spree, I think this is their fifth tower proposal as of late? Right?

spoonman Oct 7, 2019 11:17 PM

Thanks Mello. That’s exactly what I was trying to determine...whether this was a new project or a rehash of the 2nd twin tower proposal.

Will O' Wisp Oct 8, 2019 4:39 AM

Hot off the presses for ya'll, I got renderings of SD Grand Central at both NAVWAR and the ITC site. First up we got NAVWAR:

https://i.imgur.com/i935yK8.jpg
Note: this image depicts both the at-grade automated people mover and the tunnel options in one rending. The at-grade APM is on the elevated platform at the right. The tunnel concept is the deep tunnel running off to the left.

https://i.imgur.com/egSz2Hq.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/zDOnElS.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/cp5G1h6.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/z1Pp9vv.jpg

Additional pics here

Will O' Wisp Oct 8, 2019 4:55 AM

And here's the renderings for the ITC site:

https://i.imgur.com/XnP2xAp.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/yXE2qn7.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/GpZaxUu.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/puGN6US.jpg

Additional pics here

superfishy Oct 8, 2019 11:14 AM

Now that looks world class. Fingers crossed for the underground being Hyperloop or Maglev.

aekrid Oct 8, 2019 1:17 PM

Interesting,.. So the Navwar complex would replace the old town station it looks like? If that's the case I'm more in favor of that.


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