Editorial by Karin Zirk
The way I see it, the only reason the Rose Creek corridor was spared undergrounding, like San Pedro Creek, or extensive development over the last fifty years, was that it was being saved for future development. Well the future is here. SANDAG is moving ahead with plans for light rail running along the creek. Now I’m a huge fan of public transit (I use it almost every day), but I’m also a huge fan of wild places in my neighborhood.
Currently SANDAG, the State of California high speed train project, the Coaster, Amtrak and the company running freight trains all have plans to put more tracks down along Rose Creek. Mostly there is a single or double track in the area now and that’s plenty. If 6 more tracks are added, there goes our wild space.
At the May meeting of the Friends of Rose Creek, Move San Diego make a presentation on their vision for public transit in San Diego County – and it is based on high speed bus routes. The focus of the presentation was on the area in and around Rose Creek. For the most part, their ideas of keeping the buses on existing roadways made us very happy. Their plan is a plan in progress and we gave them plenty of input.
Their idea to put a transit connection at the intersection of Bond & Garnet in Pacific Beach seemed a bit far fetched to me. This of course was predicated on a bridge from the north east corner of Balboa and I-5 over the freeway and over Mission Bay Drive – another stretch of the imagination in my opinion. Hopefully they took our suggestions to heart that a better location for Pacific Beach would be near the entrance to Mission Bay Park and I-5 South so transit patrons could pop off the bus and roller blade or walk directly into the park.
However, I was very pleased with the consideration their plan gave to avoiding impacts to Rose Creek. I personally am a dreamer and I believe that we can have excellent public transit and greenbelts in our neighborhoods. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
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