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Sabre Springs bike path upgrade gets green light

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Nearly $1.6 million in funds will be available to widen a current bike route in Sabre Springs south of Poway Road possibly as soon as late 2009 or early 2010, according to the San Diego Association of Governments and city planners.

SANDAG pledged $500,000 and the remaining $1.1 million will come from the Sabre Springs community plan, according to Gabby Aves, a community representative for District 5 Councilman Brian Maienschein.

The environmental review for this project is in its early stages, she added.

The current path is “fairly narrow and quite treacherous,” said K.C. Butler, an avid bike rider and member of the California Bike Coalition.

The exact length of the improved path, which will be considered a Class 1 bike path, has not been released.

A Class 1 bikeway, according to Kathy Keehan, executive director of the SD County Bike Coalition is “completely separate from traffic.”

The section that would be improved would make a huge difference to bikers trying to cross into Sabre Springs from a path near the Penasquitos Pump Station on Cara Way, off Scripps Poway Parkway.

“It will be a great connection for Sabre Springs, getting into Mira Mesa,” Keehan said. “The path itself is beautiful, we just have to retrofit that one little section (just east of Interstate 15).”

Riders who take that path at the bottom of the canyon, which crosses the Los Penasquitos Canyon Creek, are typically coming from Mira Mesa, Scripps Ranch or Rancho Penasquitos into Poway or Sabre Springs, according to Phillip Erdelsky, a member of the San Diego County Bike Coalition.

Erdelsky, an avid bike rider, describes the existing Sabre Springs path as the “most awkward bike path terminus on San Diego, especially for bicyclists traveling west on Poway Road.”

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