Jackson Drive Extension Stirs Debate

Deer, coyote, bobcats and endangered birds roam freely in the 5,700-acre Mission Trails Regional Park on the eastern boundary of San Diego. It’s a pocket of wildlife covered by the rare coastal sage scrub where hikers and bird watchers can enjoy the serenity of the pristine mountain park.

City officials have proposed a 2.4-mile extension of Jackson Drive through that wilderness parkland, and amateur naturalist Gary Suttle believes that the proposed four-lane road could jeopardize what is now considered the nation’s largest expanse of natural open space within city limits.

“When you walk in there, it’s a whole different world. It’s as if you’re not in the sixth-largest city anymore,” said Suttle, who lives southwest of the park in Allied Gardens.

But many neighbors of the park said they have had enough of the traffic congestion on residential streets in the Allied Gardens area from commuters racing to find faster ways to busy Mission Gorge Road and Interstate 8 and from there north on Interstate 15. Those who favor the road say the extension will provide some relief, as well as provide greater access to the interior of the park.

Jim Madaffer, chairman of the Tierrasanta Community Council, which favors the extension, said the road provides a vital north-south link for the city. “Many of the concerns from the opposition are from the emotional aspect. They aren’t looking at a San Diego in the future,” he said.

San Diego Councilwoman Judy McCarty, who represents that area, is pushing to begin construction on the extension, which cuts through the western part of the park, by the end of next year. She said it will relieve traffic congestion and provide commuters in that area a direct link to California 52, once it is extended eastward to Santee.

“This road will also lead into the interior of the park. It will open up the park for everyone, not just for the local residents and Sierra Club,” McCarty said.

Sierra Club members and some residents living in the communities that wrap around the park are concerned over the project’s high price tag and the environmental damage it may do to the park.

The project is estimated to cost nearly $71 million, including the cost of the debt service, said Robert Radlow, chairman of the grass-roots organization Citizens Against Jackson Drive Extension.

He said he also doubts that the extension will do much to relieve the area’s traffic congestion during peak hours. The extension of Jackson Drive, which now dead-ends at Mission Gorge Road, would only divert 4,000 cars from Mission Gorge Road, which now carries 37,000 to 46,000 cars a day. Radlow said the road will also bring pollution and noise to the park.

“You can’t have peace and tranquility with all that air and noise pollution. Who wants to hike with a four-lane highway above you?” Radlow asked.

McCarty said the extension would carry about 20,000 cars a day, since it will be the only northern connection east of Interstate 15.

Radlow and other opponents of the extension point to a 1988 study conducted by the San Diego Assn. of Governments when they talk of the extension proposal. Sandag said the proposed Jackson Drive extension is by far the least effective solution to the traffic problems, said Janet Esser, Radlow’s wife and a newly elected member to the San Carlos Area Council. The San Carlos council formally opposes the project.

McCarty said plans for the extension have been a part of the city’s General Plan since 1960, and the recent uproar against the project has come as a surprise to her. “I’ve kept the people informed, and they told me they wanted this road,” she said. A petition drive has already gathered 500 signatures of people favoring the extension, she said.

The extension will serve as a northern connection for the Navajo communities, which include Grantville, San Carlos, Allied Gardens and Del Cerro, McCarty said.

Barbara Massey, who sits on the San Carlos council and Navajo Community Planners, said the road will be a massive “cut-and-fill” project. “The road will not blend in. It has not been designed to curve naturally through the valley,” she said.

“Canyons will be filled in and hilltops whacked off,” she said, noting that the project will remove 2 million cubic yards of earth and require 1-million cubic yards of dirt for fill.

Included in the project is a bridge that would rise 250 feet and span 1,600 feet over the San Diego River, which cuts through the park.

Allied Gardens resident John Todd said he supports the extension because streets in his community, such as Waring Road, Princess View Drive, Twain Avenue and Zion Avenue, which were never intended to carry heavy traffic, are being used by commuters as access streets to Interstate 8.

“If Jackson Drive is opened up, those people won’t use our residential roads anymore,” Todd said. He said the congested roads have also posed a safety problem, especially for area schools.

Todd and other supporters of the extension are also using the park as a rallying point, saying the road will open the interior of the park to all citizens. A visitor information center and campground will be built near Hollins Lake in the northeastern corner of the park, McCarty said, and should open within the next year.

Before construction crews can begin to break ground on the road, an environmental impact report, which was supposed to be released in December, must be certified by the City Council, which must then vote to adopt the route, McCarty said.

Opponents of the road hope the environmental report will block the project, noting that the park is a setting for riparian, or stream-side, vegetation, such as willows, cottonwood and sycamore. It is also home to birds like the endangered least Bell’s vireo and the threatened yellow-throat, Suttle said. He said the coastal sage scrub contains aromatic shrubs such as the California sagebrush and laurel sumac, which turn emerald green after winter rains.

“The land was purchased by the city with bond money for a park, not to put in a transportation corridor,” said Linda Michael of the San Diego Sierra Club. “These plants and animals are treasures that we have. We must protect them.”

April Boling is a member of the Navajo Planners and said the group is waiting for the environmental report to be released before it announces its position on the debate, although she said she would like to see the park preserved.

But, she is wary of the report because it is being conducted by the same group that is designing the extension, P&D; Technologies. Lou Ann Holmes, assistant to McCarty, said it is standard for the “designers to coordinate the environmental impact report to make sure the most environmentally sound design is used for the road.”

The road extension will be funded by a lion’s share of a half-cent sales tax that voters approved in 1987 for a list of road improvements.

Radlow said the costly extension is unnecessary because, 2 miles east on Mission Gorge Road, at Mast Boulevard, construction is under way to join California 52 and California 125, serving the same function as the extension. McCarty said that project will take 10 years to complete, and commuters need a direct access road as soon as possible.