Carlsbad cuts plan for Barrio from five traffic circles to one

Carlsbad’s City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to reduce the five traffic circles proposed for the downtown Barrio to just one at the intersection of Harding Street and Pine Avenue.

Originally eight intersections were proposed for traffic circles in the city’s Village and Barrio master plan, which recommended them as a way to slow speeding vehicles and make pedestrians and bicycle riders more safe.

After further studies and community meetings, city planners found three intersections to be inappropriate and dropped them from the plan. The City Council approved a design with five traffic circles in 2020.

Then last month, when the construction contract was scheduled to be awarded, the council stepped back. It halted the contract to take another look at the project because of neighborhood concerns about driving through the circles and worries that street parking would be lost to the project.

City officials said in June that the city would lose a $4 million federal grant if it chose not to install the five traffic circles. However, staffers said Tuesday they have worked with Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration so that the city will not lose the money if it keeps one traffic circle in the plan.

Staffers also found ways to save parking spaces and instead add new ones by converting parallel parking to diagonal parking on wider streets and removing some unnecessary red curbs.

The traffic circle at Harding and Pine, considered a neighborhood gateway, will include an art element, possibly a sculpture, yet to be determined. The intersection is at the corner of the Pine Avenue Senior Center, the Carlsbad Community church, and a block from the Harding Community Center.

The project will include stop signs, raised crosswalks, speed cushions and/or other traffic calming measures on other streets in the Barrio.

A conceptual plan and high-level cost estimate for construction, including the utilities affected, will be presented to the City Council in November.