La Jolla Parkway repaving now delayed to May 1, San Diego councilman says

Drivers will have to wait awhile longer for the much-anticipated repaving of La Jolla Parkway because the weather has remained cool, according to San Diego City Councilman Joe LaCava.

LaCava provided updates on that and a large swath of other topics as he addressed the La Jolla Shores Association on April 12 during its monthly online meeting.

“There is so much to talk about,” said LaCava, whose District 1 includes La Jolla.

Here are some of the issues he discussed:

Paving La Jolla Parkway: The busy road’s long-delayed resurfacing is now tentatively scheduled to begin Monday, May 1, LaCava said. City crews are still waiting for nighttime ambient air temperatures to stay above 50 degrees for two weeks for the new road material to set properly. The work will be done at night to prevent large daytime traffic jams.

The parkway resurfacing is part of San Diego’s “Sexy Streets” initiative, which aims to fix cracked and crumbling pavement and get potholes plugged.

“We have a contractor ready to go,” LaCava said. “But we … have to have warmer nights than we’ve been currently having.”

Once work begins, it will take about a week to be completed, he said.

Sidewalk vending: LaCava has been “in conversation with the city attorney’s office to try to clear up any confusion” about whether sidewalk vendors in La Jolla are operating under First Amendment rights, he said.

Some vendors remain in La Jolla’s Scripps Park, operating “under what they believe is their First Amendment rights,” as San Diego City Councilman Joe LaCava says.

(Elisabeth Frausto)

Since full enforcement of a city ordinance aimed at curbing sidewalk vending began in coastal areas Feb. 1, some “street vendors that we see out there are operating under what they believe is their First Amendment rights,” LaCava said.

“There’s actually been really good enforcement and education,” he added, saying two vendors have lost their permits and a third is on the verge of doing so.

Crosswalks: A new crosswalk with flashing pedestrian beacons at La Jolla Shores Drive and Vallecitos is still scheduled to be installed after San Diego Gas & Electric completes utility undergrounding projects in The Shores, LaCava said.

LJSA requested the crosswalk after a crash in June 2021 injured two children and their mother who were walking there.

After undergrounding is finished and roads are repaved, the city “will follow up with the curb ramps and streetlights,” LaCava said.

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Crosswalks also will be added at the La Jolla Shores Drive intersections with Camino del Collado and Azul Street after the city installs new streetlights at those locations, he said. Both crosswalks also will wait until undergrounding and repaving are complete, LaCava said.

Get It Done: LaCava encouraged residents to continue to report problems such as potholes and burned-out streetlights on the city’s Get It Done app, even if it seems the reports go unattended.

Continued reporting “creates a heat map of where the problems are” and generates “hard numbers that cannot be debated,” LaCava said.

“When you wonder, ‘Should I really continue to use Get It Done now? What’s the point? I don’t see any action,’ the fact [is] we had hard evidence from Get It Done … that allowed us to invoke different solutions than we normally would be allowed to,” he said, such as hiring electrical contractors to handle a backlog of streetlight outages.

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