From the Documenters
This story came from notes taken by Thomas Vedder, a San Diego Documenter, at a Imperial Beach City Council meeting earlier this month. The Documenters program trains and pays community members to document what happens at public meetings.
A cycling infrastructure project between the San Ysidro international border crossing and the Bayshore Bikeway in Imperial Beach is nearing completion and should be open for use this summer.
The 6.7-mile connection, estimated to cost about $31 million total, will run parallel to the trolley from the San Ysidro Port of Entry, before heading west to connect to 13th Street and the bikeway.
The project includes new infrastructure and upgrades to bike facilities aimed at improving safety, officials with the San Diego Association of Governments told the Imperial Beach City Council at a recent meeting. The additional infrastructure will primarily be added at intersections. The rest of the bikeway, running adjacent to the roads, has varying safety features, with some portions having barriers separating bicycles from vehicles, and others only having signage.
Intersections along the bikeway will receive curb extensions where additional foliage will be placed between sidewalks and roadways. These extensions aim to create more separation between cars and pedestrians and to create a wider turning radius for cars at intersections.
The curb extensions will also have “bend outs” – a feature which will bring the bike path away from the street, closer to pedestrian walkways at intersections.
The project also includes adding speed lumps to reduce vehicle speed, water drainage gaps in the curbs for areas with shrubbery as well as new road signage, pavement and paint.
Construction crews have been working on the project since 2023 in an effort to create safer infrastructure for bicyclists and pedestrians near intersections.
“That is the goal of this city: to make our streets safe and family-friendly,” Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre said at the meeting.
Construction crews are currently working at 13th and Imperial Beach Boulevard. After they have finished, they will then move to the final intersection, 13th and Palm Avenue.
Mayor Pro Tem Carol Seabury asked SANDAG staff about the usage rates of bike paths in the area, saying she rarely sees people using the current paths.
SANDAG Project Manager Madai Parra said that while they have not conducted a study to track current cyclist usage on the bike paths, they did consider numerous factors on where to implement the infrastructure upgrades and that the primary aim of the project was the safety of all road users.
From 2015 to 2022, there were 46 accidents involving cyclists in Imperial Beach, according to data from SANDAG. Many of these accidents occurred on Palm Avenue, where additional bike infrastructure is not planned to be implemented.
