Loop Proposal Aims at Easier I-5-Ardath Access

Remember old “Wrong Way Roy Riegels,” the football player who scooped up a fumble in the 1929 Rose Bowl and rambled toward the wrong goal line? Well, here’s a highway overpass for him.

San Diego transportation officials are considering a proposal for a massive, $12-million U-turn that would provide the long-awaited link for North County commuters between Interstate 5 and the gateway to La Jolla: Ardath Road. There is now no northbound entrance to the freeway or southbound exit onto Ardath.

Configuration Is Not for Dummies

This, however, is not a simple set of freeway ramps.

Under the plan, motorists heading out of La Jolla in search of northbound Interstate 5 would first steer east on California 52. Half a mile down the highway, they would veer onto a sprawling, horseshoe-shaped overpass that would loop them back west. Heading the way they came, our intrepid drivers could then catch another ramp leading to Interstate 5 north.

Similarly, drivers speeding south on Interstate 5 would rumble east on California 52, hit the high-speed overpass and swing back west to pick up Ardath Road and zip into La Jolla.

Riegels would be pleased.

But the plan, which is to be studied later this year by the state Transportation Department, has yet to win many staunch boosters in La Jolla. Moreover, officials with Caltrans grumble that the big loop seems, at first blush, to be a bit wrong-headed.

“We tried to discourage the city from it, but they indicated they want us to go forward with a study,” said Kurth Barnes, a deputy district director for Caltrans. “We just don’t know how many people would really use it.”

Barnes noted that motorists can now accomplish the same U-turn by heading a bit farther east on California 52 and using the underpass at Regents Road. Others sometimes simply take 52 all the way east to Interstate 805, which joins Interstate 5 just a few miles to the north.

“This overpass would save maybe 1,300 feet of travel and maybe a couple of minutes over turning off at Regents Road,” Barnes noted. “We’ll have to weigh the costs against that sort of benefit. . . . But just studying it doesn’t commit us to it. The final conclusion may be that it shouldn’t be built.”

Some Answer Is Sought

Though well aware of the plan’s shortcomings, San Diego traffic officials are eager to see some sort of solution to provide the missing link between Interstate 5 and Ardath Road.

The lack of ramps has prompted motorists to flood a trio of streets leading out of La Jolla--Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla Shores Drive and North La Jolla Scenic Drive--in an effort to reach Interstate 5 via La Jolla Village Drive.

About 55,000 vehicles a day are expected to use La Jolla Village Drive as nearby UC San Diego expands during the next decade. By providing a link between Ardath and the freeway, traffic on La Jolla Village Drive could be reduced by up to 20%, traffic planners predict.

“I can see the advantages and the disadvantages of the U-turn,” said Allen Holden Jr., deputy director of the city’s transportation planning division. “It’s not a simple one. I can see the benefit in providing those missing moves. But I can also see that this is a fairly expensive project and the U-turn is obviously not the same as providing the moves right there at the interchange.”

Given their druthers, most officials would much prefer a simple, direct link between Interstate 5 and Ardath Road, an idea that’s been debated for more than a decade.

On a Steep Grade

But such a project is not so simple. Ardath Road sits well up a steep hillside from the freeway, and an entrance and exit would require gargantuan bridges that would cost more than $50 million.

Even then, the bridge project might gobble up so much room to the north that it would interfere with traffic using the freeway’s intersection ramps at Gilman Drive, said Caltrans’ Barnes.

A few years ago, planners turned to the idea of the big loop off California 52. It is now one of more than 80 proposals on a list of road projects in the city to be addressed by council members Feb. 13.

Funding, meanwhile, could prove a less testy problem than winning backing for the big loop. The city already has begun setting aside $12 million for the project from money collected under Proposition A, the 1988 half-cent sales-tax measure designed to improve the county’s transportation network.

If the overpass proves infeasible, another solution might be construction of a “Texas U-turn” off California 52 at Regents Road, Holden said. That proposal, which could be completed at much less cost, would loop an extra lane through the underpass at Regents, allowing motorists to avoid a pair of existing left-turn signals while making a U-turn to head back west.

Big Loop Is Main Focus

For now, however, planners are focusing on the big loop, but La Jolla residents have given the proposal a lukewarm reception.

Rob Whittemore, La Jolla Town Council president, said the cost of the overpass would be less expensive than a direct link, but he is concerned that it might create a magnet for traffic from Pacific Beach. Before the big loop is built, he said, traffic planners should look toward improving the freeway entrances and exits in Pacific Beach.

Don’t Want Extra Traffic

“Pacific Beach doesn’t like it when La Jollans drive through their town, and we don’t want Pacific Beach residents coming through La Jolla to head north on the freeway,” Whittemore said.

Virginia Grizzle, a longtime La Jollan and a traffic engineering aficionado, is dead set against the loop. As she sees it, the overpass is “a Band-Aid approach” that will only send more cars reeling toward the notorious Ardath Triangle, the traffic-choked intersection between Ardath and Torrey Pines roads.

“I think a lot of people in La Jolla think the idea is pretty silly, which is what I think,” Grizzle said. “This overpass is not really going to help things. I just don’t think it makes good sense, particularly when you’re talking about spending that much money.”

The problem: There’s no exit from southbound Interstate 5 onto Ardath Road, the main route leaving downtown La Jolla. And there’s no entrance to northbound 5 from Ardath. The loop might simplify life for people trying to get into and out of La Jolla.