By KENDRA SITTON  | Uptown News

Businesses and residents opposed to taking out parking on 30th Street in order to install a bike lane officially filed a legal challenge to the plan on Tuesday, Aug. 13. Save 30th Street Parking claims in their lawsuit the City of San Diego did not do proper outreach ahead of the decision, a requirement under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Land use attorney Craig Sherman filed the lawsuit on behalf of the group, which formed earlier this summer in the wake of the decision.

“Based on what we now know, special interest groups were fully informed, and they got special back-channel access to City officials to participate, promote, and be granted their special project. But there was no significant or meaningful information or outreach to the general public nor CEQA-mandated environmental review disclosures as required by law,” Sherman said in a press release.

Proponents of the bike lane have called the lawsuit baseless. KPBS reporter Andrew Bowen described the suit as a longshot partially because CEQA was amended in 2013 to so slower traffic and parking loss could no longer be used to challenge a project’s approval.

— Kendra Sitton can be reached at [email protected].