Plans for protected bike lanes along a deadly stretch of University Avenue in eastern San Diego have suffered a setback after a failed round of construction bids, as inflation continues to drive up the cost of infrastructure.
The University Bikeway would begin near San Diego's border with La Mesa and extend three miles through the neighborhoods of Rolando Park, Rolando Village, El Cerrito, Redwood Village and City Heights. It would also connect to a larger network of planned and existing bikeways in Normal Heights, North Park, University Heights and Hillcrest.
The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG), San Diego County's transportation planning agency, has been preparing to construct the University Bikeway for more than a decade. In October it received three bids from contractors — all of them above the agency's expected price tag of $23.4 million. In December the agency decided to reject all the bids and start the process over, hoping that tweaks to the design will lower costs.
"We plan to re-advertise the project in spring 2025," SANDAG told KPBS in an email. "In the meantime, to provide more flexibility, we plan to break up the scope of work to include a base bid and bid alternatives with the additional elements."
The project's new timeline leaves little room for error. That's because a portion of the bikeway's funding comes from state grants that have to be awarded by June 30, 2025, the agency confirmed. If SANDAG fails to meet that deadline, it has to send those funds back to Sacramento.
Anar Salayev, president of BikeSD, said the delay is reminiscent of what happened to the Pershing Bikeway, a separated bike path that opened last year on Pershing Drive in Balboa Park. While that project was mired in years of delays, two people — a cyclist and a scooter rider — were killed in separate collisions in the summer of 2021.
"The plans were in place, we knew that the plans would save lives, but because of delays and other political and administrative hurdles, they came too late," Salayev said. "We've already seen a number of incidents, a number of fatalities, on University in the last two years. And we expect to see more before this project comes to fruition."
The stretch of University Avenue where the bike lanes are set to be installed has seen more than 400 collisions over the past decade, according to city crash data. Those crashes have caused at least 290 injuries and at least three deaths — most recently last April, when a pedestrian was fatally struck by a driver while trying to cross University Avenue at 54th Street.
SANDAG's bike program has a long history of delays and cost overruns. Some projects faced opposition, leading SANDAG to spend additional time and money meeting with community groups and developing new design alternatives. Other projects faced permitting delays from the city of San Diego, which has to maintain the facilities after construction, due to disagreements with SANDAG over design and engineering details.
In 2019 SANDAG abandoned a bike safety project in the Talmadge neighborhood where a cyclist was fatally injured in a collision two years prior.
The rising cost of SANDAG's bike projects has been a regular subject of debate among the elected officials who make up the agency's board of directors. At a meeting on Dec. 13, several board members raised concerns about having to earmark an additional $6.1 million to complete bike projects on Washington Street in Mission Hills and Bachman Place in Hillcrest.
"We need to be better informed about what it is we are approving," said Carlsbad City Councilmember Melanie Burkholder. "I will support this today, but I'm not happy about it."
Many of SANDAG's bike projects involve installing new lighting, reconstructing roads and sidewalks, building retaining walls and relocating underground utilities — all of which can drive up costs significantly. But Solana Beach Mayor Lesa Heebner, whom the board elected as its new chair last week, told KPBS that SANDAG still has to deliver on the bike projects it has in the pipeline.
"We can't continue to revisit projects that boards in the past have already committed to, but we do have to adjust," Heebner said. "When I see bike projects, I see them as a public safety enhancement for our communities. More people are riding bikes, especially with e-bikes on the rise, and so we need to have that public infrastructure that's going to get people to and from wherever they want to go safely."
San Diego City Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera, whose district includes the University Bikeway project area, said he hopes SANDAG will prioritize cheaper designs and building materials in future bike projects.
"We can do better to look at the low-cost, quick option first because there are multiple benefits to doing that," Elo-Rivera said. "We get more projects done. The projects provide the benefit more quickly to the community. And I think that those are benefits well worth pursuing as a default."
