Ruffin to Kearny Villa Backups : Businesses Want Balboa Avenue Traffic Relief

A group of Kearny Mesa businessmen have loosened their collars, rolled up their sleeves and begun poring over road maps and blueprints in an effort to improve traffic conditions on Balboa Avenue between Kearny Villa and Ruffin roads.

Representatives from 12 businesses along the avenue--ranging from a temporary services agency to an electronics company--organized in November to discuss solutions for the heavily traveled route. The group, the East Balboa Avenue Traffic Consortium, says the number of traffic accidents and fatalities has increased on this section of the road, which connects Interstates 15 and 805 and serves as an east-west thoroughfare between Clairemont and Tierrasanta.

But the group’s efforts have hit a roadblock. This section of Balboa Avenue was to have become part of California 274--a state highway--when the I-15 exchange was completed two years ago. But before the road can be turned over to the state, the city must make drainage and structural improvements to bring it up to state specifications. These improvements are not slated for completion until 1987, said Barbara Weamer, a spokeswoman for acting Mayor Ed Struiksma.

So who does the group turn to--the city or the state--to ease the traffic flow?

The group will take its questions, complaints and suggestions to the acting mayor’s office Thursday to find out.

“All we want to do is get the city and state to cooperate with private business, which is the group having the (traffic) problem,” said Steven Beary, group chairman and corporate property manager for Kyocera International Inc., one of the businesses calling for action on the traffic glut.

Beary said this overused section of the avenue poses a safety risk to company employees and denies easy access to some buildings along the road.

The congestion and hazardous driving conditions are a result of the area’s rapid growth, Beary said. Constructed more than 25 years ago, the two-lane section of the avenue was designed to handle local traffic to an industrial park. But as Kearny Mesa development boomed and traffic became heavier when the road was extended between Interstates 15 and 805, the avenue’s capacity between Kearny Villa and Ruffin roads proved increasingly inadequate, he said.

“We’re really a victim of 1959 planning. When these plans went into effect, there were only jack rabbits down here,” Beary said.

The city has allocated $140,000 in fiscal 1986 and an additional $315,000 in fiscal 1987 to bring this section of the road into line with state regulations, Weamer said. But the city has no plans for large-scale improvements to ease congestion, she said, because the road will become the state’s responsibility. Weamer said the city will meet with the group and might be able to provide temporary solutions until the road changes hands.

The California Department of Transportation has no immediate plans for expanding this stretch of Balboa Avenue either, said Caltrans spokesman Jim Larson.

“We’ve got other things to work on. The ball’s in the city’s court,” Larson said. But he added that “we’d be interested in what (the group) has to say. Obviously, they work out there and see what goes on.”