[mello]

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.