A Visionary Approach to Getting Around San Diego
Last month I attended the Mission Hills Town Council meeting to hear from Alan Hoffman, lecturer in City Planning at SDSU and an advisor on transportation and long-range planning, who began working on Uptown 2025. Uptown 2025 came about after Hoffman heard from local business owners how concerned they were that SANDAG was planning to remove a considerable amount of on-street parking without replacing it. As Hoffman looked deeper into the issue, it became apparent that the proposed Uptown transportation projects were not going to resolve the key problems, and in fact, would often conflict with each other. What was missing was a vision to guide these projects, show how they should work together, and demonstrate how to actually solve the problems of bicycling, transit, driving, parking, and walking.
According to Hoffman, “The Uptown 2025 plan is still a work in progress, but already we can claim to have resolved the biggest transportation problems facing Uptown in the future. We vastly improve transit, create world-class bicycle facilities, improve traffic flows, help strengthen the pedestrian environment, and even add, not subtract, parking in the commercial districts.”
Hoffman added, “If Uptown is expected to absorb some share of the region’s projected growth, our proposal creates the backbone that can allow this growth to add to, not subtract from, Uptown’s quality of life. The project is collectively expected to cost about 1/2 of one percent of the Regional Transportation Plan (RTP)–a bargain when you consider that Uptown has 1.3 percent of the region’s residents. So the problem is not cost or budget–it’s priority. Uptown 2025 implements the Mayor’s Climate Action Plan in a big way, and as such, we would look to Mayor Faulconer for leadership in getting this project implemented successfully and as quickly as possible.”
After seeing and hearing Hoffman’s presentation, I was pleasantly surprised by his visionary approach to reviewing the challenges and coming up with the Uptown 2025 plan. For all of us who live, work and visit Mission Hills, Hillcrest and Bankers Hill, and the surrounding communities, I encourage you to visit this site to learn more about Uptown 2025 and encourage Hoffman to continue his role with a plan that can be the future for San Diego: http://www.facebook.com/quickwayproposal.
Category: Local News
