ENCINITAS — Some roadways in Encinitas will be improved in the upcoming fiscal year, and overall, the city’s paved streets exceed state and county standards.
On Wednesday, the City Council unanimously approved 50 roadway segments for improvement. The Encinitas City Council had previously budgeted about $5 million for road resurfacing projects in fiscal year 2025-26, according to city records.
The City Council also identified additional, specific roadway improvements, including re-striping portions of Leucadia Boulevard, Mountain Vista Drive and Encinitas Boulevard.
Bollards will be removed along the resurfaced stretches of Leucadia Boulevard, according to the approved plan. Mountain Vista Drive will be modified to include 10.5-foot-wide lanes for cars, a 10-foot median and a 2-foot buffer before the bike lane, which will fill the remaining space.
The Encinitas Mobility and Traffic Safety Commission approved the design for the stretch of Encinitas Boulevard from North Coast Highway 101 to Interstate 5 on Nov. 10, according to city records. The commission recommended that staff evaluate the feasibility of adding physical infrastructure — such as flexiposts or bollards — to discourage vehicles from entering the bike lane.
Mayor Bruce Ehlers said he supports the idea of using a physical barrier at the discretion of city engineers to improve safety along that stretch of Encinitas Boulevard.
Deputy Mayor Jim O’Hara said he opposed “randomly placed bollards.”
“They wouldn’t be random,” Ehlers said in response. “They’d be where people are cutting through illegally on the bike lane and getting to the conflict zone early.”
O’Hara pushed back, saying that “if we start engineering for what people are going to do illegally, we get down a really tricky path.”
The council agreed to defer adding bollards for now and to revisit the discussion after further study of use patterns on the repaved road.
Councilmember Joy Lyndes said she appreciated the discussion around the use of bollards and hoped the city could develop a more universal roadway design policy moving forward.
“I want us to really develop safe standards that we apply in the future under the majority of circumstances,” Lyndes said.
Councilmember Luke Shaffer has been an outspoken advocate for analyzing and standardizing mobility options through the development of a mobility master plan.
Dan Nutter, the city’s director of engineering, said developing such a plan is “definitely a doable task” and “would be helpful for everyone to know ‘this is the consistency and standard that we’re going to be applying’ across the board on projects as we move forward.”
Roadways from 10,000-foot view
Overall, the city maintains 168.7 miles of roadway, measured at the centerline, which accounts for over 33 million square feet of pavement, or nearly 6% of Encinitas’ surface area, according to city records.
The city values its roadway network at $455 million, according to those records.
Roads are measured for quality using a metric called the Pavement Condition Index, or PCI. A newly paved road receives a score of 100, whereas older roads are graded based on various factors.
More than 74% of Encinitas roads were rated “Good” or “Very Good” with PCI scores of 65 or higher in an October assessment, according to city records. Less than 4% were rated “Poor” or “Very Poor,” with scores below 45.
The statewide average PCI score is 65, while the San Diego County average is 64, according to city records.
“This is probably one of the crucial parameters to make our streets safer, especially for bicyclists and skateboarders,” Ehlers said. “We spend all this time talking about separating them, but geez, we’d better make the pavement flat and smooth.”
