[SDCBC] Well it looks like I am not the only one...

[Wade Blomgren]

On Jan 9, 2008 11:36 AM, Jim Baross <JimBaross at cox.net> wrote:
>Building the required
> Bike Path/MUP w/o providing for reasonable, not just one-sided, access
> was/is short-sighted to say the least! I'm wondering why the funding for
> appropriate design and construction and maintenance wasn't/isn't included in
> the original (Caltrans?) effort....

I think there's something funky in the history of the design and
implementation of this path - the access on the west side of ECR is
very marginal - there is a curb cut, but the connection down to the
path is unusually steep and at an absurd angle, and in very poor
condition compared to the rest of the path.  Furthermore, the path
goes in both directions from the marginal connector - north-ish around
under ECR, fully connected to points east, but also south towards the
bank and other buildings to a dead end - why?   The connector that's
there looks like an afterthought, or perhaps it even existed before
the path - to access a fire road behind the buildings?  It's not part
of any reasonable design.

See what I mean here:

http://tinyurl.com/yovhfb

The connector is at the top right.  Panning down to the south you see
the "real" (dead)end of
the path here:

http://tinyurl.com/ywj69w

behind Ruth's Chris etc.

Does it appear that the path was going to connect from there under the
freeway to old SV Road, maybe before the freeway widening made that
less feasible?

There's no way to get from the end of the path up into the building
parking lot...if there was, that
might be a reasonable connection to ECR, as there is a signal at the
parking lot intersection.  I recall that the path terminus is well
below the building grade though...

None of this really speaks to whether there should (now) be good
connections from the path directly to ECR - I think there should be of
course....just trying to shed some light on what may have happened (or
failed to happen) with the original design.

The dead end is sort of a square pad area...maybe the assumption was
that by the time all the surrounding development was completed,
personal jet packs or mini-helicopters (cold-fusion powered, of
course) would be the norm and that would be a landing pad, from which
you could start a bike ride.  I mean, we were definitely supposed to
have the personal jet packs by now, right?  It's been like 40 years
since I was explicitly told that I, and everyone else, would have one
in the "Future".  Well, not so much told as I assumed it based on some
imaginary conflation of seeing James Bond in Thunderball and watching
the Jetsons.  But still, I was counting on it.  I'm kind of pissed.

Wade

ps. I'm getting me one of those robot vacuums pretty soon now.   And a
robot lawnmower, definitely a robot lawnmower.  That's pretty much all
I need.  Those, and this paddle game...