http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2016/mar/29/construction-planned-for-roads-missing-link/

CARLSBAD — Construction is set to begin next year on Poinsettia Lane’s “missing link” between Interstate 5 and El Camino Real, much to the relief of some Carlsbad residents, a city official said Tuesday.

The one-third mile of new road will reduce crowding on a neighboring residential street and help ease the minds of some homeowners who have pushed for better escape routes since the 2014 Poinsettia wildfire roared through area.

“The fires scared people,” said Carlsbad Community and Economic Development Director Glen Van Peski. “Some people felt trapped.”

The Poinsettia fire charred more than 600 acres, including all the land around the proposed road extension, and consumed five houses, 18 apartments and a commercial building in Carlsbad. It was one of more than a dozen large blazes that exploded in Southern California over several days of unusually hot, dry and windy Santa Ana conditions in May 2014.

The road extension is linked to the planned construction of 140 homes on 61 acres south of Cassia Road between Ambrosia Lane and El Camino Real. The new section of road will cross through that project.

The environmental documents for the development, known as the Poinsettia 61, are being prepared now by the Lennar Corp., which built the nearby Bressi Ranch community. The documents are expected to be finished and presented to the Carlsbad Planning Commission for a public review later this year, and then to the City Council for final approval. The project also requires the California Coastal Commission’s approval.

Eastbound Poinsettia now ends just past Aviara Community Park, where traffic turns north onto Cassia Road, past several large gated communities and apartment buildings, to reach El Camino Real.

“There is more traffic on Cassia than it was designed for,” Van Peski said, adding that residents there “are very much looking forward to getting that solved.”

The road’s extension will also reduce traffic at the intersection of Cassia and El Camino Real and allow Carlsbad’s traffic department to “fine tune” the signal lights at Cassia and several other nearby intersections on El Camino Real, he said.

That should improve the commute for a large number of drivers on El Camino Real, many of whom use the road as a north-south alternative to the I-5 freeway.

Included in the project is construction of a 150-foot bridge to carry Poinsettia over a small canyon, Van Peski said. The span is being built instead of installing culverts so that wildlife can pass safely beneath the road.

Before construction can begin, the developer must purchase land elsewhere in the region that can be set aside as natural habitat to mitigate the environmental damage caused by the project. The location of that mitigation property is still undetermined.

The entire extension project is scheduled for completion in mid-2019, Van Peski said.

Completion of the extension is expected to increase traffic on Poinsettia Lane by only about 200 cars daily, he said. Palomar Airport Road, which is the next I-5 exit to the north, is more of an east-west thoroughfare and carries much more traffic.

The expected cost of the core road and bridge work is $12.7 million, Van Peski said, and almost $11 million of that has already been collected in building permit fees from developers in the district served by Poinsettia Lane.

That amount does not include the cost of things such as street lights, curbs, gutters and other improvements, which will be paid for by the residential developer, Lennar.