Encinitas staff outline HSIP grant-backed projects for Encinitas Boulevard, El Camino Real and Coast Highway 101

City traffic staff presented four concept-level projects the city won under the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP) Cycle 12 and asked commissioners for initial feedback on design priorities before staff seeks Caltrans design funds.

Project summaries: Staff said the grants are conceptual at this stage and require further design and council direction before construction.

- Encinitas Boulevard protected bikeway: The city reported approximately $900,000 in HSIP funding for a project between Calimac and Via Cantabria (east of I-5). Staff said the application includes protected bikeway elements that would require some form of vertical protection (bollards or comparable treatment) to meet HSIP countermeasure requirements; the city—s match would be roughly 10 percent. Staff also described optional capacity enhancements such as adding a third travel lane or dedicated turn pockets at some intersections as concept possibilities to address future level-of-service concerns.

- Protected intersection at South El Camino Real and Santa Fe Drive: Staff presented conceptual protected-intersection layouts intended to reduce crossing distances and right-hook conflicts at the site of a previous fatal collision. One concept retains existing lane configurations and adds crossing protection with minimal signal timing impact; other alternatives would modify lane geometry more substantially and require trade-offs with vehicular flow.

- Pedestrian crossing and Coast Highway 101 multimodal package at the Solana Beach border: Staff said the application included a crossing treatment and options ranging from a rectangular rapid-flashing beacon to a short-span traffic signal on short poles (a —pet— signal) and, optionally, a localized road diet. They said Solana Beach had concerns about tall mast-arm signals as a visual impact and recommended lower-profile signal options if a signal is chosen.

- Coast Highway 101 walkway and access improvements: For the segment from the city border toward Las Olas, the HSIP package included a five-foot decomposed granite (DG) path on the lagoon side in some alternatives, or a road-diet option that would reallocate space to wider pedestrian paths, buffered bike lanes and reverse-angle parking; estimated HSIP amounts cited in the meeting included roughly $1.9 million for the broader Coast Highway 101 corridor and roughly $400,000 for the specific crossing component in the border area.

Commissioner questions focused on trade-offs between safety and traffic flow, the constraint that HSIP scoring ties to documented collision history (more collisions at a site improve grant competitiveness), and whether protected elements must be vertical. Abe Bandigan, the city—s traffic engineer, said the HSIP scoring process requires a countermeasure linked to the collision types claimed in the application; staff must show how the chosen countermeasure addresses the recorded collisions. He said some grant flexibility exists to add repaving, turn pockets, or other mobility improvements alongside the required safety countermeasure.

Public speakers and commissioners raised enforcement concerns and urged an integrated approach: several commenters asked for more speed enforcement, automated cameras where allowed by state law, and better signal timing. Bandigan and Sergeant Christy Trampus of the sheriff—s traffic unit confirmed there are countywide OTS (Office of Traffic Safety) grant avenues and county strike teams that provide targeted motorcycle enforcement and DUI patrols but that those resources are limited and must be shared across jurisdictions.

What happened next: Staff will return with more detailed design options, before-and-after collision data used for HSIP scoring, and responses to commissioner requests about nonvertical alternatives (audible edge lines) and the feasibility of limited road diets. Commissioners requested the packet to include collision-type breakdowns, proposed lane-widths, and clear descriptions of where the city would provide buffers versus vertical elements.