REPAIRS TO BEGIN TODAY ON MT. HELIX DRIVE
Residents want county to add safety measures while working on road
Work begins this week on a project to repair and restripe the roads leading to and from the top of Mount Helix. But some residents want the work postponed until they can bring a full proposal to the county that addresses continuing safety issues on the curvy, narrow, one-way roads.
An email from the county to Krista Powers, executive director of the Mt. Helix Park Foundation, says contractors will be working in stages on the project, starting with the removal of existing road striping today and Tuesday.
Road resurfacing operations are scheduled for April 26 and 27 with new road striping tentatively scheduled for May 3 and 4. The county told Powers the road will be closed from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. on days work is scheduled.
But some residents who live along Mt. Helix Drive and its offshoots are hoping that the county will hold off until it considers ideas and a safety plan that community members have been working on for
nearly a decade.
Some of those involved in the plan are from the Grossmont-Mt. Helix Improvement Association, a group that advocates for about 20,000 residents in the area.
The plan addresses several ways to end illegal parking on the sides of the narrow road, including using red paint along the sides of the roads to indicate that parking is for emergency vehicles only. Although signs prohibiting parking are posted up and down the roads, Powers said they are usually ignored.
Illegally parked cars, sometimes as many as 30 up and down the hill, don’t leave enough room for fire engines, ambulances or other bulky public safety vehicles, residents say.
The California Highway Patrol and the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department, which oversee the area, have been asked by residents to step up enforcement and ticketing of those parked illegally.
The group has asked the county to consider moving “candlestick” delineators near the edge of the road further out. The candlesticks were recently put in by the county as a way to deter vehicles from parking along the roadway. Powers and others say the delineators don’t allow pedestrians enough room to walk, and end up forcing walkers and joggers out into the road.
The road has no designated walking lane or bike lane or a combination of both, which the group is also championing. The only paved road that leads to the top, Mt. Helix Drive, is popular with hikers and cyclists.
Atop the hill are the private park’s two heavy electric gates that lock the entrance and exits to the park. While the park is privately managed by the nonprofit Mt. Helix Foundation, it is open to the public from sunrise to sunset most days.
While Powers and members of the GrossmontMount Helix Improvement Association say they are pleased that some fixes are coming, they are frustrated because they say that the county did not let them know about the planned street improvements enough in advance.
County spokeswoman Donna Durckel said that residents on Mt. Helix Road
were provided a hand-delivered letter Aug. 12, 2020, about pending work and contacted again on April 12 when construction start dates were confirmed for the following week.
Powers, who also lives in the area, said she only caught wind of the plan when she got a phone call on April 12 from Amir Etezadi, a resident engineer and consultant representative for the county. Etezadi works for Kleinfelder, the company hired by the county to oversee the road updates along Mt. Helix Drive.
Mount Helix resident John Richardson said that the community group was fine-tuning its requests to share with the county before the work started on Monday — or as soon as possible thereafter — but that he wasn’t holding out a lot of hope.
“The county has had a pattern for more than 10 years of ignoring us,” Richardson said. “We have been trying as a group to work on solving this, the illegal parking, the trash and crime that are associated with people who loiter in a particular area. It’s just unfortunate.
Kathleen Hedberg, president of the Grossmont-Mt. Helix Improvement Association, said she hoped the county would hear the pleas of those who live there.
“If the county is going to do something now, they’re not going to do it again,” Hedberg said. “I told (Powers) that I hope the county won’t move forward until they look at this plan. We want them to be in a hurry to fix the road, of course, but we want it to be the right plan.”
Durckel said that the resurfacing work is routine and is unrelated to the parking concerns. She said that the county Department of Public Works has been actively involved in the parking issues along the road.
“(Public Works) continues to meet with law enforcement about enforcement issues and has been proactive in engaging with the community,” Durckel said. “The county plans on continuing with the resurfacing work followed by the installation of temporary striping measures at this time to evaluate potential options to restripe and/or install traffic control devices to help address the parking prohibition concerns from the community.”