Bonita-Sunnyside Residents Have Been Asking For Traffic Relief for Over 24 Years to No Avail

This is Proctor Valley Road. It once was a quiet neighborhood connector and home of the famous Proctor Valley Monster.

Now it's become a monster in it's own right.

At one time, it was nothing more than a dirt road meandering through the unincorporated area of Bonita-Sunnyside.

Skip forward to present time when it is a super highway with over 10,000 cars daily cutting through the formerly serene neighborhoods, mere feet from the front doors of residents living on the adjacent San Miguel Road.

It wasn't as if the town leaders weren't working for the community in those days. Dave Gillespie, Sweetwater Valley Civic Association President, wrote this letter in tandem with a letter from the Sweetwater Community Planning Group in October of 2001. Both letters were addressed to then Supervisor Greg Cox. Below is Mr. Gillespie's letter.

Two years later, another letter was addressed to Supervisor Cox, this time by the Bonita-Sunnyside Homeowners. Frustrated by the lack of response from the County, the letter is more succinct and to the point.

Four years after his first letter to Supervisor Cox, SVCA President Gillespie takes another pass at the issue in an attempt to restore Bonita-Sunnyside to it original bucolic tranquility.

"Closing Proctor Valley Road will return the streets to the residents".

That statement sums up the situation in one neat package. Dave Gillespie was a man to be respected and looked up to. If only he could help us now but sadly he has passed away.

In my many years of attending SVCA and SCPG meetings, I have never heard a single board member approach this topic. It's as if they have resigned themselves to accept the disruptive and dangerous traffic overload.

Rather than address the elephant in the room, oodles of money was spent on a HAWK system (High Intensity Activated CrossWalK) so the elementary-school children could safely cross to their school. When vehicles stopped to let them cross, cars behind would pass the stopped vehicles and there were too many, deadly near misses. So instead of dealing with the issue of 10,000 cars cutting through the neighborhood at high rates of speed, a HAWK was installed. This is nothing more than a false security measure because I have personally viewed several times when a crossing guard put their own life on the line to save a child.

I think we the people are going to have to band together to get something accomplished. It's been 24 years of nothing from the County Supervisors or SANDAG. And the traffic is getting worse daily with many close calls from residents just trying to enter or leave their driveways.

One should not have to encounter possible death or catastrophe daily just to go to work or to the store.

The County will be swearing our new District 1 Supervisor Paloma Aguirre into office at the end of this month. We can start with Ms. Aguirre.

But if she doesn't step forward to alleviate this issue, we'll need to devise a few strategies of our own. Stay tuned Common Sense readers!

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