Earlier this month, Caltrans installed a protected bikeway for the equivalent of a couple of blocks on Governor Drive from just past the entrance to the 805 South, under the freeway, past the entrance to the 805 north, and up a hill to where it dead ends into the back of a nursery. The bike lane received some notoriety on right-wing social media for its short length, with the Twitter/X account Wall Street Apes going so far as to call it “money laundering.”
Fortunately, I’ve made a bunch of new friends in the San Diego bike scene recently (that’s what we call a “tease” in the industry) and they were able to give me some context. While there are certainly issues with the lane, maybe some mitigation to help cyclists safely cross in front of a freeway entrance where the lane starts for example, it’s flatly unfair to blame Caltrans for building this project while they were doing other work in the area.
The University Community Plan for the area, created in conjunction with UC San Diego and the San Diego Unified School District, called for bike lanes in adjacent the city-owned portion of Governor Drive to provide safe biking options to both the university and local schools. Some parts of this plan have led to some new lanes on Nobel Ave., but other bike projects on adjacent streets may also be on hold.
Caltrans is the good guy in this story. The state agency was doing its part to create a local network of connected protected bikeways. Governor Drive is undergoing a pipeline replacement as part of the Pure Water project. Typically in San Diego when a road is being resurfaced, they will implement any mobility plan upgrades to the route to make the street safer for bicyclists and pedestrians.
In this case, only a portion of the street will be resurfaced for the project, and despite putting money aside in the budget for the repiping and the addition of bicycle infrastructure, the city did not budget enough for a complete resurfacing and won’t be adding the protected bike lanes even though they are "funded."
Advocates now expect that at the conclusion of this fiscal year half of the repaving will be done, and they’ll come back in the next fiscal year and finish the job, ultimately resulting in a smoother, faster, 4-lane road. Time will tell if the bicycle facilities, funded in this fiscal year's budget, will be added at that time.
So yes, it may be a “bike lane to nowhere,” but the fault (or delay) for its current odd appearance lies with San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and whoever created the budgets for the water project and street improvements. Again, Caltrans was doing its part to create a connected bikeway. San Diego dropped the ball.
For more, read this op/ed in today’s Union-Tribune by Ian Hembree, the advocacy and community manager for the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, and Martha Wudka, who started the UC Bike Bus.
