I’m e-mailing him right now!

I fully understand you. My point is totally aligned with yours however I wish to make an ever generalizable point.

There is no school, library, or post office. WORSE is that this is far from the already sprawled out work centers of San Diego county. The single most important distance to care about in smart growth is distance to work centers because that is the trip almost every household makes every working day. You don’t have to go to the post office every day. This is the second fallacy of smart growth, which is if you zone for commercial on the ground floor and houses above that people drive substantially less. Poppycock. The first fallacy is if the city’s zone for mixed use that sprawl will be blunted. Poppycock number two.

W O, if this development truly upheld the principles of Smart Growth and New Urbanism, it would be a mixed use development–which means that there would be residential and commercial spaces close enough for residents to walk and bike to/from.

There are plenty of small towns located in forests which uphold the principles of Smart Growth, New Urbanism, and Livable Streets even before these expressions existed. Think of Julian, for example.

Did you read the quote by Peter Norby which said the following?: …’No schools, No library, no post office, and only freeway serving commercial down by I-15 at the off ramp.’

No schools, library, or post-office? This development is a failure from the drawing board.

Do you think that because this developer is building in ‘the forest’, as you put it, that that justifies their plan to a dangerous, auto-centric tract community w/ one sidewalk on a major road, a crosswalk which leads into a median, and rounded corners that facilitate speeding motorism?

See the forest. Look at a bloody map of where this development is going. Nobody is going to bike to work from there.

LOS, as it exists now, is a form of institutionalized bias which grades and rewards traffic engineers for engineering a road which serves a high level of automobile traffic while offering absolutely no rewards (in the form of a grade) for roads which serve a high level of bicycle traffic. There is no incentive for traffic engineers to facilitate bicycle ridership, yet there is a tremendous incentive for traffic engineers to facilitate automobile ridership.

Equality between cyclists and motorists will never exist as long as LOS is allowed to exist in its current biased state.

Last we heard, the California Bicycle Coalition is working to reform LOS so that cycling ridership is not ignored. If you’re interested in helping, please get involved w/ CBC’s efforts. http://www.calbike.org/

The above comment is in response to the following:

‘Q: How will the project mitigate its traffic impacts?

A: The development of Merriam Mountains provides an opportunity to address some long-standing traffic problems in the community. Deer Springs Road is planned to be widened to four lanes from I-15 to Twin Oaks Valley Road, and improvements are proposed to the I-15/Deer Springs Road interchange. These improvements are designed to improve existing level of service as well as accommodate cumulative impacts from other planned projects’

Note the auto-centric perception of ‘traffic.’ The question asks about ‘traffic’ yet the implication in the response is that automobiles are the only form of traffic…at least, the only form of traffic worth a response. Also, widening Deer Springs Road will only increase automobile capacity on the road. This will not ‘mitigate’ or ‘improve’ traffic. This makes traffic worse. Improving traffic by adding lanes is like fighting one’s own obesity problem by loosening one’s belt.

Ahhh, what a breath of fresh air from the folks at Merriam Mountains.

This is an excellent blog entry because it exposes the ill-thought philosophy of auto-centric sprawl and the failed planning, thereof. There is absolutely no indication, based on the info currently available that this Merriam Mountains development will uphold the principles of ‘smart growth.’ If Merriam Mountains claims that this is, then they’re spewing nothing more than greenwash.

Based on their website’s homepage picture (also posted above), Merriam Mountains will not be a walk, bike, or non-motorist friendly place. Note the narrow sidewalk on only one side of the street. Why not have two sidewalks? Note the faux-crosswalk that leads directly into a median and then, on the other side, leads directly into a block w/ no sidewalk. Speaking of blocks, notice how rounded the corners of the blocks are rounded. Rounded corners facilitate speeding motorists and increase the deadliness for innocent pedestrian standing/walking nearby. Also, there appears to be quite a bit of grass in this rendering. Can San Diego’s water supply afford more water-consuming lawns?

Richard Hogan wrote a hard-hitting academic book called “The Failure of Planning: Permitting Sprawl in San Diego Suburbs, 1970-1999.” Check it out.

There are many signs so far, that the Merriam Mountains development will be yet another example of failed planning.

Mind if we re-post this entry on Bic Control?

Yes Good Article – especially the info and commentary about what a general plan is for. Tyranny is here.

The best quote on the Leucadia blog is:
[The Merriam Mountain project] results in in 35,000 vehicle trips a day. More vehicle trips on Hwy 15 during peak hour than the entire NCTD Coaster removes from I-5 all day at huge tax payer expense.

This one project would wipe out the impact of the Coaster. Please don’t advocate for more mass transit if you let things like this go by without a fight.