Depot Plan Draws Jeers in Encinitas

More than 150 people jammed a meeting of the Old Encinitas Community Advisory Board on Monday night to boisterously oppose a bus and train station proposed for downtown.

The City Council, which has conceptually approved the station, has “sold out the citizens of Encinitas,” said Rachele McFarland, a resident who opposes the transit center because of the “pollution and transients that it would attract.”

Another resident, Alan Matez, told the board, “I bought my house with the idea of not having a home across the street from a bus station.”

That’s how it went long into the night as citizens, some of them jeering, told the board how they feel about the station, which is proposed for behind the La Paloma Theatre near Vulcan Avenue and D Street. The North County Transit District is negotiating to buy the site from the Santa Fe Railroad. The station would handle city buses as well as commuter trains planned for the future.

Many audience members, parents with children attending Pacific View Elementary School a few blocks from the station site, were worried that the increased bus traffic to and from the station would pose a safety hazard.

Their view was echoed by Virginia Cartwright, chairwoman of the advisory board, who protested the idea by declining to formally participate in the meeting.

“I am not at all objective,” Cartwright said outside the meeting hall. “I am offended by the plan. I think lives will be lost.”

The crowd jeered when a transit district staff member said the project’s environmental impact report found no significant traffic or pollution problems would be caused by the station.

Although the City Council has already approved the idea of a multiuse station on the site, the project must go through the city’s design review process. In addition to a commuter rail platform, plans call for 250 parking spaces and bays for eight buses.

District spokesman Pete Aadland said it is essential to keep the bus and train terminals together because the station is intended to link the two systems, cutting down on the number of automobile trips in the area.

Although residents complained that the station would increase bus traffic, Aadland said there won’t be a significant difference.

“There will be a maximum of 208 bus trips a day,” Aadland said. “Currently, within a half-block of the site, there are 164 trips a day, so there is not going to be a tremendous increase in the number of bus trips.”