The City of San Diego has spent quite a bit of time over the past few years figuring out the best options for housing and transportation around Morena Boulevard. The city believes that these new additions will make it a more urban area and help with not only climate change by lowering the need for cars, but with the housing costs.
The proposal is to battle the high cost of housing in San Diego and fight climate change by lowering the need for cars with these new trolley stops.
The Morena Boulevard additions are a piece of the $2.1 billion mid-coast line project. With the proposal comes 6,000 homes near a new station at Tecolote Dr and Morena Boulevard and another 3,500 homes near the upcoming Balboa station that will be west of the I-5 near Pacific Beach.
With the upgraded areas of the San Diego area come changes to other things, such as taking Morena Boulevard from four lanes to three, a new and improved walkway for pedestrians, and a guarded bike lane. But with all these new ideas going into effect, there were some from the original 2014 proposal that were not approved, including improvements to the Clairemont Drive trolley station and changes to the eastern side of Balboa.
If the housing plan goes through, Mike Hansen, the San Diego city planning director, says that the increase in housing alone will be significant. The housing production will take about a year altogether around the city. However, it will take years before everything is completed.
Hansen said that they are not sure how the housing next to trolley stations will play out, but says that it is a test run to see whether or not it helps.
Lori Zapf, the former Republican District 2 City Council member, asked her colleague, San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, to abandon the changes to the Clairemont Drive station to which he complied. But last year, after Zapf had lost to Jennifer Campbell for the City Council seat, Faulconer reversed his statement and allowed the developers to build up to 100 feet if they have received the correct permission.
Campbell doesn’t like that Morena Boulevard has been determining whether or not the city is committed to achieving their housing and climate goals. She has said that it doesn’t make sense to build three trolley stations in the same community. The stretch of Morena is only three miles long, and there is already the Linda Vista Station.
Campbell said she spoke with San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) Director Hasan Ikhrata. SANDAG is in charge of the new trolley line. Ikhrata said that they were only building the new stations because there were already tracks there and it would make the project cheaper.
Jennifer Campbell is trying to get at least one more change through the council. The planning group from Linda Vista, where Tecolote Station is located, asked that 40 percent of the new housing be appropriated for low income tenants. Campbell’s goal is 15 percent reserved for low income residents, which is still higher than the 10 percent citywide.
She’s also ready to fight to keep four lanes on Morena Boulevard rather than decrease them to three. This road already struggles with congestion, so the traffic would only get worse.
“We’re already taking significant value out of the land and in exchange, they’re going to see increased density. So we already feel that we have created some balance,” said Mike Hansen.
Dave Potter, a Clairemont local, has been a part of the Morena process for awhile now.
Potter wished they would have made the changes that have been previously proposed for the Clairemont station since they had spent so much time planning for it to be shut down.
He went on to say that the new buildings that would be on top of the station and it gives people reason to not buy cars and use public transportation instead.
Overall, these changes could benefit the lowering of housing costs and improving the use of public transportation.
Photo by Daniel McCullough
