PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
San Diego city crews went to work Monday, August 5, on a portion of Sunset Cliffs that has noticeably eroded. A small section of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard near Guizot Street was shifted east by about 5 feet.
The construction work is scheduled all this week from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. causing portions of Sunset Cliffs Boulevard to be closed to traffic during those hours.
The city of San Diego identified it as urgent work to protect visitors and infrastructure.
Street crews removed the deteriorating guard rail and shifted the walking path, road markings and both travel lanes. Attached to the new guardrail is wood fencing to limit access.
The erosion along our beautiful cliffs has been going on for eons and is nothing new. What’s new is how the current crop of humans is dealing with it.
Also, just to be clear, this portion of the cliffs is not the section that the Rag has highlighted over the last couple of months for being dangerous to people on the beach below. That section is way south of the portion being worked on by city crews.
In its report on the current situation, 7SanDiego focused mostly on neighbors’ reactions.
Some homeowners are more concerned about the city of San Diego’s answer to eroding cliffs than the erosion itself. Sunset Cliffs visitors are noticing a new traffic pattern in the area.
“They were here this morning. They started early,” homeowner Ernie Higuera said. Higuera blames the pitch of the road. He says this year’s heavy rains caused much of the collapse. “So much water going over the cliffs, you could literally see the ground getting disturbed and moving away,“ Higuera said.
Also, it gave the station a chance to talk up the city’s highly-touted “coastal resilience plan.”
While this bit of construction is emergent, it may just give a glimpse of the city’s coastal resilience plan, which was introduced to Higuera and his neighbors in June. The goal is to mitigate risk from sea-level rise, protect and enhance habitat and support access to the coast. “They want to reroute traffic up on Devonshire, which is where I live. It will increase all the traffic a ton more,“ Higuera said. “I know a lot of people that live around here aren’t happy about it,” Higuera said.
According to the city’s 2005 Master Plan posted online, a 10-foot-wide pedestrian walking path would be created. Traffic on Sunset Cliffs would change from two-way to one-way southbound.
Won’t someone think of the poor homeowners on Devonshire and Cordova? How will they ever recover.
I just had a look. All the work is done. The city moved some guardrail in, built a barrier behind the rail to keep walkers out, took out a few parking places on Sunset Cliffs on either side of Guizot, striped the curb red, and repainted the double yellow line all the way to, and up, Ladera Street.
The yellow striping job is so bad it makes me wonder if the city employees did it themselves. A private striping contractor would never get away with such a lousy job.
And, they added six elastomeric sharrow symbols, which are very expensive. The symbols are not far apart. I guess the cyclists and drivers can’t remember the road is shared without one of these symbols every 50 feet.
The city said Aug. 7 that the section of road had been reopened to traffic.
Well that is kind of funny because the road was open to traffic when I looked at the site yesterday afternoon.