Black Mountain Road Will Be Closed

Black Mountain Road, a winding, partly paved shortcut from inland North County to the beach, will be barricaded and closed to through traffic by fall, a San Diego City Council committee decided Monday.

By a unanimous vote, the five-member Transportation and Land Use Committee sided with residents of a Rancho Penasquitos subdivision who demanded the closing because of increased traffic along their residential streets. Black Mountain Road is being used by motorists seeking to escape the traffic congestion in the community and along Interstate 15 by using the “back-door” route to the west, linking with Interstate 5 at North City West.

Dennis Ainsworth, vice president of the Rancho Penasquitos Community Planning Board, voiced the group’s opposition to the closing, pointing out that the narrow country road had been used for decades as an escape route during fires.

Traffic Growing Daily

But residents, who earlier had been successful in getting the city to place stop signs along their streets to deter speeders, argued Monday that only the closing would eliminate the traffic danger.

About 2,000 motorists a day use the narrow residential streets in the Woodcrest subdivision to reach Black Mountain Road, and the number is growing, residents testified.

Some commuters are ignoring the stop signs and even passing cars stopped at the signs, one resident complained. Instead of discouraging speeders, the newly placed signs are making the traffic even more hazardous, he said.

A woman resident said that, when homeowners shouted at the speeders to slow down, some motorists stopped their cars, got out, shouted curses and threatened to start a fight.

“Things are getting ugly out there,” she said.

City traffic engineers proposed that Old Black Mountain Road be blocked near its mid-point where the pavement ends so that property owners--mostly nursery gardeners--could have access to either the east or the west.

Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, whose district includes the affected North City area, pointed out that city traffic engineers had warned residents that the stop signs would not be a good solution, “and should be given a chance to say, ‘I told you so.’ ”

Wolfsheimer said she was voting for approval of the road closing, but might change her position if the closing is to become permanent, “because we have a critical need for east-west major roads in that area.”

She promised to expedite the road closing, which will go before the full City Council in two weeks. The measure must undergo environmental review, legal procedures and public hearings before the barricades can be put in place, probably by August or September.

East-West Freeway

A planned east-west freeway, Route 56, will probably not be built soon, she said. City traffic engineers said that other major east-west arterial streets planned to link I-5 and I-15 probably will not be built until the land, now under a development freeze until 1995, is developed and developers’ fees can be used to pay construction costs.

Black Mountain Road, which runs from Donaker Street in Rancho Penasquitos to Carmel Valley Road and Del Mar Heights Road in North City West, is substandard and cannot be absorbed in the city’s roads system without major improvements, which it is estimated will cost $5 million to $6 million, engineers said.

Although the road remains open in its substandard condition--with hairpin turns, rutted and rock-studded surfaces--the city faces a serious liability risk, according to John Fowler, assistant city manager. Recently, Pomerado Road between Poway and the Scripps Ranch area was ordered closed when the city’s annexation of the area is completed because of similar concerns about the city’s liability for accidents on the winding, substandard stretch.