1-Way Span Into Park Is Still Favored

The San Diego Park and Recreation Department will renew its effort to have the city convert Balboa Park’s majestic Cabrillo Bridge into a one-way, eastbound entrance because a $10,000 traffic study has found no better alternatives, a department official reported Thursday.

Assistant Director David Twomey said the six proposed alternatives--which range from closing the bridge to building a second span--provide no better solutions to the conflict between pedestrians and vehicles in the park’s core than the city manager’s November proposal. Twomey received a draft of the traffic study Wednesday, he told the city’s Park and Recreation Board.

“I didn’t see anything there more attractive than what we’ve already got,” he said after a presentation to the board. “I don’t see anything there to change my mind.”

A solution to the traffic problem and parking shortages in 1,100-acre Balboa Park is the first step in a grander scheme to develop a $100-million master plan for the park in order to recapture open space in its center by converting asphalt parking lots to a series of pedestrian plazas.

To the House of Charm

The city manager’s office recommended Nov. 9 that the Cabrillo Bridge be converted to an inbound-only route that would send traffic east to the House of Charm, then south past a new 375-space underground garage that would be constructed on the site of the parking lot behind Alcazar Garden.

But at that hearing, the City Council delayed decisions on the traffic aspects of the park’s future and hired a consultant to study the issue.

P&D; Technologies’ report offered six suggestions, including:

- Leaving the bridge open to two-way traffic, with or without the construction of a second span across Archery Canyon to the Alcazar Garden lot.

- Closing the bridge and building a new east-west link from Park Boulevard that would go through the northern end of the proposed Japanese Garden.

- Closing the bridge and allowing access to the park via Quince Street or President’s Way.

Another alternative was similar to the city manager’s proposal.

Shortage Still Seen

The report also states that even if the city provides 3,520 new parking spaces in four new parking structures inside the park, there will be a “substantial” parking shortage by 2010, Twomey said. An estimated 95% of Balboa Park’s 12 million annual visitors arrive by car.

The one-way plan for Cabrillo Bridge has drawn the opposition of leaders of museums and theaters along the park’s El Prado, who fear the change would diminish the public’s access to their facilities.

But Twomey said the cultural facilities have been receptive to an experiment planned for the summer of 1989 that would use 25-passenger trams to bring visitors into the park’s core from Park Boulevard parking lots at the former Navy Hospital.