Top of the World trail improvements will come without road widening

Improvements to a trail in the Top of the World neighborhood will move forward without any widening of the private road that it connects to, the Laguna Beach City Council decided Tuesday night.

The council heeded residents’ opposition to widening Top of the World Drive by 4 feet and adding a rolled curb. A rolled curb is more gently sloping than the standard vertical-face variety.

The decision means that the city will no longer consider buying the road, which it had wanted to expand to provide easier public access to the trail.

Residents had expressed concern that a wider road would invite more speeding cars in an area that can be difficult to maneuver.

“When they come and park in front of my garage and they are speeding around the street, we have no recourse,” said Jessica Tuchinsky, mother of a Top of the World Elementary School student. “This morning a volunteer police officer got into a car accident on our street because it’s just complicated. Only residents, and the postman, know how to navigate it.”

Making changes to the trail, which primarily crosses private property, will ultimately require permission from those landowners. City staff is negotiating with the owners of two private parcels.

The path, with deep crevices in several locations, has proved difficult to traverse, though it has been used for several years by mountain bikers and children walking to school. It connects to a fire access road that crosses county property into the Arch Beach Heights neighborhood.

Planned improvements include shoring up the trail with decomposed granite and pervious concrete while creating concrete stairs in certain steeper adjacent portions.

City staff had recommended a separate decomposed granite pathway running parallel to Top of the World Drive that would have connected to the trail, but the council nixed that part of the project. The separate path would have gotten people off Top of the World Drive, since it is a bit of a walk to reach the start of the main trail.

“I thought how I might vote on this, but after hearing the testimony, there is unanimity of opinion that the neighborhood does not want to see the sidewalk improvement,” Councilman Robert Zur Schmiede said. “Let’s delete [the road widening] and put the trail in as the neighbors suggest.”

The city would need to submit design plans by mid-February to receive a $125,000 grant from the state Coastal Conservancy. Construction and design are expected to cost $425,000, Project Manager Wade Brown, who has worked on the project for 20 years, wrote in an email.