The Issue
North County Transit District (NCTD) has not followed industry standards regarding receiving community input on significant site changes proposed for the redevelopment of the Oceanside Transit Center (OTC).
Due to lapses in the public outreach process, the public was not properly informed of the proposed movement of the NCTD bus bays to the most southerly position of the OTC site, that is currently zoned residential (D5 & R3).
The movement of the bus bays was a condition made by NCTD staff, with no robust public input, and included in the NCTD Board approval of an Exclusive Negotiating Agreement (ENA) with Toll Brothers (approved September 17th, 2020). This approval was made during the pandemic with reduced in-person meetings, (thereby) reducing public participation.
As background, early as July 2019, assurances were given to neighbors by the NCTD Executive Director and Chief Development Officer that the public would be notified of any potential bus bay movements, and this notification would include public participation.
However, NCTD has resisted any questions and/or input on their desire to move the buy bays directly next to a residential neighborhood. NCTD representatives have previously disavowed any knowledge of the bus bay movements and they did not properly notify neighbors, or parties who requested to be notified, they reduced in-person participation (due to the pandemic) and did not increase any other way of notifying the public or gathering community input, prior to including this condition in the ENA with Toll Brothers.
The neighbors and community are disappointed with the lack of input on the bus bay movements and NCTD has taken notice of their lack of gathering community input. NCTD has now enhanced their public outreach efforts elsewhere. For example, NCTD’s new CEO regularly goes to public meetings to provide project updates and they are gathering additional input prior to project development and initiation.
While these new outreach enhancements are admirable, they do not make up for the missteps NCTD made with their OTC efforts. The community understands that NCTD and Toll Brothers are far down the road on the OTC redevelopments efforts, and we do support most of their development at the OTC. Neighborhood groups such as the Oceanside Coastal Neighborhood Association (OCNA), have tried to tender a solution, which to date has not been accepted. This solution, while not making up for all the errors, solves a part of the community’s concerns.
The solution
If the bus bays must be moved to a new southern alignment, keep inbound bus traffic on Seagaze Dr to Cleveland? and outbound bus traffic on Michigan to Tremont to Seagaze. This generally keeps traffic on the same streets they currently travel on and does not impact any new residential streets which are narrower and not intended for this bus use. These bus routing requirements should be made as condition of the zoning changes to document and codify these requirements.
