Appeal Court Hears Pomerado Road Closure Arguments

If San Diego is granted the right to close Pomerado Road, a north-south bypass to crowded Interstate 15, every community in the state will want to exercise the right to barricade its streets to keep commuters out.

That was the argument of Poway City Atty. Stephen Eckis on Tuesday before the 4th District Court of Appeal in support of his contention that closure of the regional arterial is illegal and improper.

“The state Legislature never intended a bold new grant of authority to local governments,” Eckis said of San Diego’s interpretation of state legislation cited in support of San Diego’s closure of the road.

But Leslie Girard, deputy city attorney for San Diego, told the three-judge panel that the Legislature had meant to increase local control of street and highway traffic when it passed legislation in 1982, allowing Berkeley to create one-way street barricades to solve some of its inner-city traffic woes.

That legislative act is the basis for San Diego’s appeal of a Superior Court judge’s ruling that Pomerado Road, closed to through traffic for the past 2 1/2 years, should remain closed until another bypass route is built to relieve traffic congestion on the Scripps Ranch segment of Pomerado. That road, South Poway Parkway, has been delayed and is not expected to be completed until mid-1992.

“I feel confident that this court will confirm the trial court’s decision,” which was to reopen Pomerado Road immediately, Eckis said.

A decision on the appeal is expected in two to three weeks.

Girard told appellate court Justices Richard D. Huffman, Charles W. Froehlich Jr. and Mack Amos that San Diego had the right to barricade Pomerado to prevent thousands of commuters from other communities from using the road through the upscale suburb of Scripps Ranch.

Girard urged the judges to consider the impact of the large South Poway industrial park and the traffic it would generate on Pomerado Road, the primary access to the industrial area.

Pomerado Road, which links Poway Road and I-15, was closed by San Diego for widening and other improvements in October, 1988, and was scheduled to be reopened last fall when the reconstruction work was completed.

But the San Diego City Council voted to keep the road closed until another direct route from Poway’s industrial park to I-15 is built.