Transit Depot Plan Has Encinitas in Uproar : Planning: Residents don’t want a combined train-bus center in downtown. The North County Transit District says the proposal has been approved in concept, and that the town has a responsibility.

Six years after a quest for self-government led Encinitas to become a city, local residents are again hearing the rallying cry of independence as the young city grapples with one of the most emotional issues of its short history.

At the core of the debate is a North County Transit District proposal to build a combination bus and commuter train station in the heart of the coastal community’s downtown.

Although most locals agree that the idea of a commuter rail station is a good one, they vehemently oppose including an eight-bay bus terminal on the 0.8-acre site, behind the La Paloma Theater at Vulcan Avenue and D Street.

This week, 200 people crowded into a meeting of the Old Encinitas Community Advisory Board to oppose the plan, which the board then voted to reject.

“This is not a NIMBY (not in my back yard) issue,” attorney Michael McDade told the board.

Rather, McDade argued, it has more to do with a community attempting to control its own destiny--in 1986, the adversary was the county; now it’s the NCTD.

“The thing that sticks with us is this outside agency coming in and telling us what we have to do with our town,” said Kathleen O’Leary, a leader of opponents to the project.

The NCTD board of directors insists that the bus-train linkup is essential to promote mass transit and cut automobile traffic. Encinitas is simply part of the big transit picture, they say. NCTD is planning new stations up and down the rail system.

“There is a certain responsibility that goes along with being part of society,” said Pete Aadland, spokesman for NCTD. “If (Encinitans) want independence, they probably can find an island where they can do what they want.”

Opponents envision buses idling in the bays, spewing out pollution. They also see noisy buses unable to maneuver on the narrow streets, causing congestion, and transients using the terminal as a meeting point. Some parents are worried the buses would be a safety hazard as children walk to and from a nearby school.

The NCTD has been planning to build on the site for more than four years. After several delays, it is negotiating to buy the land from the Santa Fe Railway.

Behind the scenes, NCTD officials have left some city representatives with an impression that they believe they have a legal right to proceed with the plan, with or without full city approval.

They contend that, since the City Council approved the concept of a bus-train station two years ago, current city input, including meetings of the Old Encinitas Community Advisory Board, is to hash out design details, not to approve or disapprove the basic concept.

When the city approved the concept, it stipulated that NCTD go through the design review process, which includes review by the Community Advisory Board, Planning Commission and eventually City Council.

NCTD spokesman Aadland said whether NCTD can move ahead without city approval is “one of the things we’ll be looking at.”

But McDade, who has been hired by the Haciendas de la Playas Homeowners Assn. to represent a 100-unit condominium project across the street from the site, is preparing a legal argument against the station.

He said he is armed with a 1989 legal opinion written by NCTD attorney Dwight Worden maintaining that Encinitas is still the responsible agency with “land-use permitting authority” over the property.

If NCTD maintains that it can go ahead without city approval, “then they’re bound for a lawsuit,” said McDade.

Since the advisory board’s rejection, NCTD hasn’t decided how to proceed, Aadland said. The decision could be appealed to the city planning commission and the city council, or a revised plan could be presented, although the NCTD has no alternative plan in mind.

But if NCTD moves ahead without city backing, there could be a legal battle.

“Bureaucracy is a strange duck,” said Encinitas Councilwoman Gail Hano. “Some agencies feel immune. Some feel God-like.”

In 1990, Hanso was the lone dissenter as council voted conceptual approval of a combined bus-rail facility.

That vote angered many station opponents.

“We found out we were not as protected by being a city as we thought we would be,” said O’Leary, president of the Haciendas de la Playas Homeowners Assn. “We thought the City Council was there to protect us, but they allowed a big powerful regional agency to come in and shove this down our throats.”

Councilwoman Pam Slater voted for the concept at the time, and she also represented the city on the NCTD board of directors. She says she felt the plan was a “logical and sensible” choice to “relieve freeway congestion.”

But now Slater has had “second thoughts” after hearing from residents and further studying the plan.

“I don’t see why we can’t reach a compromise,” said Slater, who is running for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors. “The buses could pull up (on the street) and people could embark and disembark, and we won’t need that big facility there.”

But NCTD has shown no signs of embracing such a compromise.

“The plan doesn’t make any sense without the bus interface,” said Aadland.

NCTD is convinced the station won’t cause any harm. There are currently 164 bus trips a day within a half block of the area, and there will be a maximum of 208 bus trips a day allowed through the proposed facility, Aadland said.

An environmental impact report adopted by NCTD in 1990, and later updated to include more information on air quality and traffic issues, states there will be no significant impact from the project.

“Even with our current technology, the air quality issues are not that significant,” said Aadland, noting that NCTD plans to upgrade the quality of many of its buses in the future.

But other factors are not addressed in the environmental report, opponents claim. For one, it doesn’t take into account that Encinitas plans to build its City Hall across the street from the site.

To NCTD, having City Hall across the street is another plus, since it will help make the station an important link for community events, Aadland said. He also said that the EIR was prepared before the city had finalized its City Hall plans, so it is up to the city to plan around the transit station, not the other way around.

“It’s the worst EIR I’ve ever seen,” says McDade, who served as chief of staff to Roger Hedgecock when he was mayor of San Diego. “It’s horribly superficial.”

McDade doesn’t believe the statistics presented in the environmental report, and thinks NCTD simply developed a rationale for the plan without truly accounting for the limits of the site.

“I think it sounds like they read a planning book and didn’t look at the reality of the situation,” said McDade, who believes the plan would work at a different site.

Much like the cityhood election of 1986, the bus-train station appears to have unified diverse portions of the Encinitas community.

The homeowners’ association is the most vocal opponent, but the Parent-Teachers Assn. of the nearby Pacific View Elementary School has also taken a stand against the station, fearing it will endanger the lives of children who walk to school through the area.

Even downtown business owners, who might stand to benefit from the increased traffic, oppose the bus concept.

“Why is it necessary to bring all the buses together?” asked John Gessel, a board member of the Downtown Encinitas MainStreet Assn. “There are plenty of buses that come by here.”

Pacific View PTA president Diane Redmon, who calls the plans “crazy,” said the bus portion of the plan is simply unnecessary.

“Most of the buses are empty now,” she said. “Why take a bus from Oceanside to get the train when you can get the train in Oceanside?”

Although the critics are vocal, and appear to be in the majority, some residents support the project.

“I think (the project) is necessary to make the whole system work,” said Gregory Dennis, a free-lance journalist and community activist.

“I think for mass transit to work, it has to be easy to transfer from one (system) to another,” Dennis said, although he added that Encinitas should have final say over the project.

For now, NCTD is committed to the multiuse station as the best way to serve the future transportation needs of the area and to get cars off the road. NCTD officials “weren’t surprised” by the advisory board’s rejection, Aadland said, but they believe the City Council will take “a far more objective view” of the project.

“We still believe the project is a good viable project,” Aadland said, “and that it would be irresponsible from a transportation point of view to just say, ‘OK we’re going to go do something else.’ ”