VALLEY CENTER: Residents split on Cole Grade Road widening

By GARY WARTH - Staff Writer | Sunday, September 7, 2008 5:08 PM PDT ∞

VALLEY CENTER ---- Planners in Valley Center agree that improvements are needed on Cole Grade Road, which gets congested near the high school twice a day. But a proposal to widen the road to four lanes has divided the community.

The last two Planning Group circulation subcommittee meetings, including the most recent one Thursday, saw members split on whether to widen the road from Valley Center Road to Pauma Heights Road, where it gets congested at Valley Center High School.

"I think it's crazy to spend money on a road we don't need," said circulation subcommittee member Jon Vick, who said he doesn't see the congestion as that bad.

Fellow committee member Ann Geinzer sees a definite need for widening the road.

"Now, for about two hours a day, that road is absolutely clogged up by high school traffic, and that's with today's population density," she said.

The Valley Center Community Planning Group, which supported widening the road two years ago, is scheduled to hear the subcommittee's report on the project at its meeting Monday.

Since the planner's original support for widening the road, the county Department of Planning and Land Use has presented an alternate proposal that left some people rethinking the need to widen the 3 1/2-mile stretch of Cole Grade Road between the high school and Valley Center Road.

In the county's proposal, Cole Grade Road would be widened only between Valley Center and Cool Valley roads, a distance of about two and a half miles.

One block to the north of Cool Valley Road, Hilldale Road would be extended west to connect with West Lilac Road, which connects with Valley Center Road to the south.

Subcommittee member Andy Washburn said extending Hilldale Road to West Lilac Road makes sense because it would give Cole Grade Road motorists a second route to Valley Center Road, an alternate that would be needed during a fire.

Because many cars would turn off of Cole Grade Road at that point, Washburn said, there may not be as great a need for four lanes on Cole Grade Road beyond Cool Valley Road.

Geinzer, however, sees fault with extending Hilldale Road, which she said would be used by school buses.

The county has no plans to add traffic signals on Hilldale Road, she said.

"I find that incredibly poor engineering," Geinzer said.

Vick and Geinzer also disagree on whether traffic conditions on Cole Grade Road warrant widening it.

"I drive on the road all the time, and I'm never inconvenienced by heavy traffic," Vick said. "Nobody I know says they're impeded by heavy traffic."

Vick does acknowledge that the road gets backed up twice a day at the high school, when students are being picked up or dropped off.

That problem, he said, could be solved with more drop-off points, getting more students to ride the bus or staggering school hours, he said.

Geinzer sees the twice-a-day backup as something that can be fixed now by widening the road.

"I was taught to do it right the first time," said Geinzer, a former Navy computer engineer. "You never design less than what you need."

Whether the traffic on the road will increase significantly in the future is uncertain. The county's projections for 2020 show Valley Center, which has a population of 17,000, growing to between 30,000 and 47,000 residents.

Vick said he thinks the lower figure is more correct, and that he thinks traffic on Cole Grade Road likely will decrease in the future, as the population of the high school is decreasing and fewer people are driving in general.

"There's a number of moving parts here, and we're trying to take a look at them," he said.

The Valley Center Community Planning Group will meet at 7 p.m. Monday in Community Hall, 28246 Lilac Road.

Contact staff writer Gary Warth at (760) 740-5410 or gwarth@nctimes.com.