SANDAG Goofs Up and National City and Imperial Beach Lose Out on Funding

At last Friday’s SANDAG Board of Director Executive Committee meeting, we learned that two cities that were qualified to receive funding to implement bike projects lost out because SANDAG messed up.

The two projects that were submitted in order to receive a portion of the $8.8 million in funding (but didn’t) were:

1. 18th Street Community Corridor in National City – this was a project would have provided two miles of Class II (striped bike lane) and Class III (a sign noting that the route was recommended for riding a bicycle, perhaps with sharrow symbols), along with traffic taming elements. This would have been implemented on 18th Street between Wilson Avenue and Granger Avenue in National City.

2. Bikeway Village Bayshore Bikeway Access Improvements in Imperial Beach – this project would have implemented bicycle, pedestrian and roadway improvements that would enhanced access to the award winning Bayshore Bikeway and other bicycle facilities, and install various pedestrian facility improvements.

At the meeting, the SANDAG staff report also revealed that the City of Carlsbad received $50,000 less funding than they were supposed to have received for their active transportation programs.

Local to the city, another critical project that lost out on funding during this grant process was the dangerous 54th and University intersection in the neighborhood of City Heights – a neighborhood that has two-thirds of their residents living without owning a car and yet have nearly no protected bike infrastructure for the residents to get around.

It’s a shame that projects that should have received funding lost out in this process that is needlessly competitive when it should be placed at a priority above and beyond all the unnecessary freeway widening plans that SANDAG has in store for us. Instead, SANDAG can easily allocate additional funding (instead of widening all those already wide freeways) and demonstrate how they intend to make active transportation a real priority in the region.

H/T Sara Kent.

This post has been edited to reflect the fact that Carlsbad actually received $50,000 less funding than was applied for. We apologize for a misreading of the staff report.