OCEANSIDE — An ambitious set of projects is one of the big-ticket items working through the process at the North County Transit District.
The Board of Directors discussed nine proposed grade separation projects and their strategic framework on Thursday in a massive effort to ease congestion, enhance other mobility options, and increase safety at those rail crossings. NCTD staff detailed its ranking system for the expected multi-billion-dollar effort to guide the pursuit of state and federal funding.
Eight of those projects are in North County, while the other is in the city of San Diego, according to Lillian Dougherty, director of Land Use, Planning and Control for NCTD. She said priority was established from the Breeze Speed & Reliability Study and the State Route 78 Comprehensive Multimodal Corridor Plan (CMCP), the latter of which was conducted by Caltrans and the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG).
“This plan, which was intended to look at all modes of transportation, the needs and gaps along the corridor in order to paint a picture of the vision of a multimodal system of what the future could look like along this corridor,” Dougherty said. “Specifically, these are projects deemed priority projects by our local partners to improve the community in terms of safety and mobility, and other important reasons developed by the community board.”
In 2024, NCTD also finalized its Breeze Speed & Reliability Study, a robust technical engagement through the city, county, and NCTD staff, Ioni Tcholakova, NCTD’s director of service planning, said. The study analyzed several categories, including mobility benefits, equity and community benefits, traffic and parking impacts, regional and local consistency, and cost and jurisdictional coordination, she said.
The study ranked the crossings in order of priority. Number one is the Vista Transit Center along Vista Village Drive, where a double track slices through downtown amid a series of stoplights, buses, bicycles, cars, and pedestrians. Vista Councilwoman Corinna Contreras said Breeze buses can be stopped for more than 10 minutes at the start of the route, leading to a total travel time of more than one hour from Vista to Oceanside.
