The city of San Diego is finalizing the design of a permanent roundabout to slow down car traffic and improve navigation at Sixth Avenue and Juniper Street in Bankers Hill, just west of Balboa Park. The idea is to make the high-traffic area that parallels Balboa Park’s West Mesa safer for pedestrians, bicyclists and cars, said Louis Schultz, a senior civil engineer with the city’s engineering and capital projects department. “We do have a lot of pedestrian traffic that goes back and forth from the park,” he said. “So the nature of a roundabout forces vehicles to slow down to navigate the roundabout and it makes it safer for pedestrians to make their crossings.” Construction on the project is expected to begin next fall and wrap up in the spring of 2026, Schultz said. The roundabout is estimated to cost $2.4 million when including design and construction management costs. The project is being paid for with TransNet money, the civil engineer said. The half-cent sales tax, which went into effect in 1988 and was extended in 2004, is administered by the San Diego Association of Governments. The Sixth and Juniper roundabout is designed as an island, 50 feet in diameter, with a truck apron and a raised median. The project includes new sidewalks, curbs, roadway markings, signs and sidewalk landscaping. It also calls for a change to the parking configuration on the park side of Juniper and will add an underground storm water treatment system near the Interstate 5 off-ramp five blocks south of the roundabout. Currently, the intersection is managed with one stop sign on the west side, central delineators preventing east-to-west car traffic and a rapid flashing beacon for pedestrians who want to cross between Bankers Hill and the park. “Sixth Avenue is close to the off ramp for (Interstate 5) so vehicles come off the off ramp and often travel at a high rate of speed on Sixth Avenue,” Schultz said. Once completed, cars will able to travel through the roundabout at slowed speeds and in any direction. Cyclists can opt to navigate the roundabout in the traffic lane or dismount and use adjacent sidewalks. And pedestrians will still use rapid flashing beacons, but the crossing areas will be narrowed. A conceptual rendering of the roundabout planned for the intersection at Sixth Avenue and Juniper Street in Bankers Hill. (City of San Diego) The Uptown Planners group questioned the safety of the design when presented with the project in early March. The group was until recently the city’s recognized community planning group for the neighborhood. Uptown Planners voted 6-to-1 to send a letter of disapproval to the city, in part because the city sought the group’s input only after moving forward with the project’s budget and design. “We were more than a little bit insulted that the city couldn’t bother to come to us before (the project was approved), which is the way the process is supposed to work,” said Mat Wahlstrom, an Uptown Planners board member who made the motion. The design is also unsafe for cyclists and pedestrians, who will have to share the sidewalk in that area, he said. Other board members questioned the origin of the project and wondered why the city did not consider a stoplight, meeting minutes show. The Balboa Park Committee also received an information-only presentation on the project in July. The park advisory committee did not take a vote, but it was supportive of the project, Schultz said. The roundabout does not require City Council approval. The funding for the project was allocated by City Council as part of the fiscal year 2023 budget process.