We mentioned this project in an earlier post. The San Juan Unified School District's middle school project at the site of the old Creekside Elementary School is supposed to open this January. The site is at the end of a dead-end street in the interior of a residential neighborhood. The vehicular traffic jams during school mornings and afternoons are expected to be horrific. Don't be surprised when the traffic problem spills onto El Camino, Morse and Marconi.

The school district is spending around $60 million for the new middle school. The budget did not include any money to mitigate the anticipated traffic problems. How convenient for the school district that they just dumped the traffic costs in the County's lap? So now, despite the County's Department of Transportation sincerely trying to chip away at its $1 billion deferred maintenance budget, the County has set aside some $750,000 for a new traffic light at El Camino and Kent, along with some ADA improvements to the narrow sidewalks on El Camino. The project area extends from Fulton to Park Estates east of Kent. Construction will run from November 2024 to February 2025. What's not included? Pedestrian safety islands in the middle of El Camino, a wide street that's a challenge for some people who try to walk across it - at least that's what we glean from the project announcement the County sent to some people this week.

Like so many streets that intersect our community's main roads, Kent Drive T-intersects El Camino; it does not cross it. No one could possibly have foreseen problems stemming from the lack of 4-way intersections way back when the local chicken farms and pastures were chopped up for our post WW-II subdivisions, right? And now we will have yet another random traffic light - like the ones at, say, Arden and Mission or Mission and Fair Oaks - necessitated by dumb land use planning. Perhaps we should see those idisyncrasies as something our community can take pride in. Or not.

Here is the project newsletter. The back page has the contact information for the County Department of Transportation.

Front page of the project announcement

Back page of announcement,. The contact people are Tom Andrew, andrewt@saccounty.gov and Josh Iniguez, iniguezj@saccounty.gov.