
Editor:
There are two reasons for the perpetually congested traffic on Garnet Avenue westbound from Mission Bay Drive. The first is an old problem: the stoplight at Bond Street and Garnet Avenue serves no useful purpose. From Bond Street, only a right hand turn onto Garnet Avenue is possible. No stoplight is needed for cross traffic. Residents of the small residential community south of Garnet Avenue may access Garnet Avenue, Grand Avenue and Balboa Avenue via Mission Bay Drive from Magnolia Avenue, which has a four-way stoplight. The only other access provided by the Bond Street stoplight is for pedestrian traffic from a very small north side strip mall allowing access to the Wienerschnitzel drive-in on the south side of Garnet Avenue. If the stoplight were removed, pedestrians could cross Garnet Avenue by walking a half block to either Soledad Mountain Road or Mission Bay Drive. Cars may turn right only from the strip mall onto Garnet Avenue; no stoplight required.
A second reason for congestion, thanks to permission from some city bureaucrat, will be the new Sonic drive-in (window pull-up with a right turn only onto Garnet Avenue) on the north side of Garnett Avenue, two buildings west of the Garnet /Mission Bay Drive intersection. This catastrophe guarantees permanent gridlock at one of the busiest intersections in the city and one of the few access roads into Pacific Beach. The very least the city can do after this ghastly “planning” mistake is to remove the Bond Street stoplight.
Lauren P. Hunter La Jolla
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