Supervisors Approve New East-West Road

An east-west highway that eventually will connect Interstate 15 near Escondido with Interstate 5 on the coast at Del Mar received approval from the county Board of Supervisors Wednesday despite efforts of Fairbanks Ranch residents to detour the route around their estate community.

The future highway, designated as SF 728 by the county, will run east from El Camino Real along San Dieguito Road, which splits the posh Fairbanks community. In an alignment adopted by supervisors Wednesday, the route will be extended eastward to link with Del Dios Highway, easing traffic on Rancho Santa Fe’s narrow roads.

The hearing, which was expected to be a power struggle between Fairbanks Ranch and Rancho Santa Fe leaders, ended in a compromise that will probably fail to satisfy either side. Fairbanks forces, with the backing of Supervisor Susan Golding, sought a delay to study a plan that would shunt traffic off San Dieguito Road and south into the city of San Diego.

Supervisors, despite protests by Golding, defeated a plan that would have scaled down the Fairbanks segment to a two-lane road through the community.

Another Battle to Be Fought

Rancho Santa Fe leaders apparently won the verbal battle when supervisors adopted their version of the routing plan for Route 728 and another east-west highway from Poway to Leucadia. But Rancho Santa Fe leaders will have to fight the battle again with the city of San Diego because the supervisors rerouted 728 to place part of it within the city’s northern boundary on land that is part of the city’s urban reserve, frozen for development until after 1995.

Golding, who represents both of the affluent estate communities, tried to persuade fellow supervisors to compromise by designing the 728 route to encourage east-west traffic to use a planned extension of Camino Ruiz south to a proposed east-west freeway, Route 56, and to prevent the widening of San Dieguito Road through Fairbanks to four lanes.

Supervisor Brian Bilbray chided Fairbanks residents for ignoring the fact that the major highway route had been on county road plan maps for a decade or more before the community was started.

“There’s almost a con game going on,” Bilbray said of Fairbanks area developers. “They plant trees (in the highway right-of-way) and they build walls right up to the road so that the public won’t think that it is ever going to be a major highway.”

Golding, visibly upset when fellow supervisors refused to agree to her proposal to downgrade the Fairbanks section of the highway to its current two-lane status, called the action “a slap in the face to residents of Fairbanks Ranch.”

The board decided instead to appoint Golding and Supervisor John MacDonald to negotiate with San Diego City Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer to attempt to speed development of another major east-west highway (Route 56) through Rancho Penasquitos and a connecting route to the north (Camino Ruiz) that would take future traffic pressure off San Dieguito Road.