ENCINITAS — A group of residents is urging the city of Encinitas to take immediate action to prevent more traffic-related deaths after the latest in a string of fatal collisions involving young residents since 2023.
Safe Streets Encinitas, which formed after the death of 12-year-old Encinitas resident Emery Chalekian, who was killed last year while crossing Encinitas Boulevard in a marked crosswalk at Village Square, announced its core demands during a July 21 rally outside Encinitas City Hall.
The group’s two primary demands are that the city hold an emergency town hall where residents can speak with city leaders and staff about improving traffic safety, and that the city declare a local traffic safety emergency in light of repeated pedestrian fatalities over the past decade.
A third demand calls for the city to establish a street safety task force that includes firefighters, sheriff’s deputies, engineers, City Council members and other relevant stakeholders to explore potential solutions.
Safer Streets
According to the group’s website, Safe Streets Encinitas focuses on four pillars to improve traffic safety: reducing speeding, improving intersection safety, combating DUI incidents and curbing distracted driving.
Founding members said they have spent the past year trying to work with the city but claim their suggestions have been brushed off, ridiculed or dismissed as too political.
Leigh Ratcliffe, one of the group’s founding members, said the group has advocated for infrastructure “that doesn’t ask drivers to be careful but makes it physically harder to speed in the first place.”
Ratcliffe also highlighted the group’s interest in Senate Bill 720, signed into law last year, which creates an opt-in program allowing cities to use red-light camera systems intended to equitably improve pedestrian safety.
“The City Council and mayor are supposed to represent the people, but we don’t think they’re listening,” Ratcliffe said. “More than that, we have been met with skepticism, defensiveness and disrespect by this council, and we have watched as they take that same attitude to other individuals and entities. Now another child has died. This is not something we should have to put up with… there are solutions that work. No one else has to die.”
Ratcliffe also criticized the City Council’s plan to remove protected bike lanes on Santa Fe Drive rather than prioritize other street improvement projects, as well as its rejection of a traffic-calming resolution proposed by Deputy Mayor Joy Lyndes last summer.
Ratcliffe, a recently appointed member of the city’s Mobility and Traffic Safety Commission, said the City Council has yet to review and provide feedback on the commission’s Comprehensive Safety Action Plan, which it recommended for council review last year.
‘This is a pattern’
Among the speakers were Emery’s mother, Bridget Chalekian, and Clare Champlain and Troy Kingman, parents of Brodee Champlain-Kingman, a 15-year-old who was killed in an e-bike crash on El Camino Real in 2023. He would have graduated from San Dieguito Academy this year.
The most recent fatality was Seraphina “Fin” Rose Fadick, 17, of Encinitas, who died after being struck by a vehicle while crossing El Camino Del Norte in Olivenhain on July 10.
“Brodee, Emery, Seraphina – three different streets, three different ways a car found them,” Champlain said. “This is not a coincidence we can explain away one crash at a time. This is a pattern. Patterns are the kind of tragedy we have the power to prevent.”
Champlain urged the city to reinstate red-light cameras, saying they helped reduce crashes at two city intersections for more than a decade before they were removed.
“This isn’t a mystery we haven’t solved. It’s a solution we stopped using,” she said.
Chalekian said her family has stopped attending City Council meetings because they feel insulted by what they see as the city’s lack of meaningful action.
“What has been heartbreaking is watching our city leaders take so little meaningful action to improve pedestrian safety after Emery was killed, and now, our community is facing another devastating tragedy,” Chalekian said. “Our family begged the city to not let this happen again, and yet here we are.”
Chalekian pointed to the city’s creation of a 14-member skate committee, saying it demonstrates city leaders can act quickly when an issue is considered a priority.
City points to progress
Mayor Bruce Ehlers, who attended the rally, said he was not offended by the criticism and understood residents’ emotions. At the same time, he said the event did not fully reflect the steps the city has already taken to improve traffic safety.
Members of Safe Streets pointed to Hoboken, New Jersey, which has implemented numerous safety measures over the past decade to reduce pedestrian deaths.
Ehlers said Encinitas has already adopted several of the same strategies, including gradually lowering vehicle speeds throughout the city, resulting in an average speed reduction of about 2.2 mph. The city has also installed leading pedestrian intervals, giving pedestrians additional time to enter crosswalks before parallel traffic receives a green light.
Ehlers noted that while Encinitas and Hoboken are similar in size and population, Hoboken’s far greater reliance on public transit creates a significantly different transportation landscape.
Other recent city efforts include increasing sheriff’s deputy-initiated traffic enforcement and adding two deputies dedicated to traffic safety.
Ehlers said the city has also taken the group’s request for red-light cameras seriously and that he would like to see additional measures to reduce stop sign violations.
The city’s 2026-27 annual work plan, which took effect July 1, includes several traffic safety goals:
- Analyze existing infrastructure, including signage, striping, signals and intersections.
- Develop a community traffic safety awareness plan.
- Improve driver behavior through increased enforcement targeting speeding, DUIs, distracted driving and red-light and stop sign violations.
- Increase education and enforcement to improve e-bike safety.
- Consider using red-light cameras.
- Develop and evaluate the need for a citywide traffic safety action plan with an integrated, map-based visual display.
- Improve alternative transportation routes.
Ehlers said he also hopes to hold a future special City Council meeting to hear from residents and clarify the city’s traffic safety efforts.
“I look forward to continuing working with Safe Streets,” he said. “We all want to make Encinitas streets safer.”
