​The Coast News has a recent article about the new pedestrian undercrossing at Verdi (link below).

The good news is that the design is beautiful. The article has an image of the plan for the crossing and it's worth checking out. The bad news is that the total project cost will be about $8.8 million including all the design work and construction. The City of Encinitas will need to get a grant to cover some of the cost.

The need for a grant introduces a bit of uncertainty into the timing for construction. With no dependency on a grant, construction on the new undercrossing could start in the summer of 2019 and be finished in 2020.

The city and its contractor (HDR) are preparing to submit an application for an Active Transportation Grant to cover as much as $4 million of the costs.

In a recent newsletter article, our mayor (Catherine Blakespear) indicated that the earliest completion date would be in 2021 if a grant was secured.

We'll keep you posted as we find out more.

From a recent email blast from "Build NCC" (basically SANDAG and CalTrans):

Motorists, pedestrians and bicyclists may experience short intermittent delays along San Elijo Avenue the week of Monday, May 21 between Verdi Avenue and Santa Fe Drive from 7 a.m. – 5 p.m. Construction crews will restripe traffic lanes along San Elijo Avenue and place concrete barriers along the west side of the road. Vehicle flagging operations will be in effect during this work.
 
Parking on the bluff along this stretch of San Elijo Avenue will be prohibited at all times during construction of the Coastal Rail Trail bike path.  Parking will return in the form of parallel parking upon completion of work in this area. This section of work is expected to be completed by October 2018.

SANDAG confirmed that work started at the end of April. They sent out a notice to that effect in email and now multiple press articles have confirmed that the project is underway. A link to one of the articles (in the Encinitas Advocate / Del Mar Times) is below.

Apologies for the false start in March; we were passing along the latest info that we had.

SANDAG is setting the expectation that the new trail will open in early 2019, with the completion date roughly aligned with the end of the double tracking project. With that said, we should probably be realistic and expect some delays; even so, it seems likely that the trail will be ready at some point in 2019.