Roads & Infrastructure

Message from Councilman Scott Peters

Thank you for taking the time to visit my web site to learn about the Torrey Pines Bridge Project. I hope that my web site will clear up some of the facts related to this project, and the reasons that I feel we need to move forward.

The City has been working on this project for nearly a decade, and the City Council approved the currently proposed design in 1999, before I was elected. When I took office in late 2000, one of the first issues that I began working on was the Torrey Pines Bridge. I began holding meetings with the community a month after I was sworn into office, and have held many meetings with stakeholders since then to try and find an alternative configuration. I have always thought that a two-lane configuration would be ideal, but the realities of $3.4 million in added costs and the risks to the health of the Los Peñasquitos Lagoon have persuaded me to support the project that was approved in 1999.

In considering this matter, I needed to take several facts into consideration. First, the existing bridge is a danger because it is seismically unsound, scoring 19 out of 100 on the CalTrans structural integrity scale. Second, the 72 pilings that support the existing bridge clog the mouth of the Los Peñ'asquitos Lagoon, and inhibit tidal flushing. Tidal flushing of the lagoon is essential to a healthy lagoon environment, and replacing the bridge will reduce the number of pilings and allow for natural tidal flushing. Biologists warned that prolonged delays in replacing the bridge could cause serious harm to the lagoon environment. Third, changing the configuration of the bridge from the approved three lane to a two lane bridge would increase the cost of the project by $3.4 million and result in a delay of at least a year. The outlook for finding this money in the already tight City budget was grim at best and a significant delay would put the $8 million Federal contribution at risk. It is counterintuitive that a narrower bridge would cost more than a wider one, so I have explained the reasons for the additional costs.

One of the main concerns expressed by members of the community was that because the City of Del Mar is unlikely to widen its bridge to the North a bottleneck would be created funneling three lanes of traffic into two. I recognized this problem and asked that the bridge be striped for two lanes so there would be no additional traffic on Coast Highway. The Coastal Commission agreed and added this as a condition of approval.

In the end, the choice is between a fully funded, lagoon-friendly, seismically safe, traffic neutral, three-lane bridge on one hand, and, on the other hand, hope for an unfunded and undesigned two-lane bridge that would cost $3.4 million more. My view of the state and City budgets leads me to conclude that there is virtually no chance of obtaining $3.4 million for an alternative bridge to what is already a good plan. Because I inherited this project from the previous City Council, I needed to work with the project in the environment in which I inherited it. The risks to the lagoon and the added project costs were too great to require a delay of this project.

I encourage you to thoroughly review the material on this web site and make your own evaluation of this issue. If you have any questions or need further clarification on a particular point, please feel free to contact me at scottpeters@sandiego.gov