Encinitas will receive a $4.7 million state transportation grant for the long-sought railroad undercrossing at El Portal Street, and design work could begin by the year’s end, jubilant city officials announced this week.

“We’re super excited,” city Public Works Director Glenn Pruim told a reporter during Wednesday night’s City Council meeting.

The best part? The city got every penny it asked for in its grant application to the state Department of Transportation. This means that when the grant is combined with $700,000 in city matching money, the Leucadia-area pedestrian underpass project will be fully funded for construction.

“We got the full $4.7 (million) — that was amazing,” Pruim said.


By Wednesday night, word had spread through the city’s Leucadia community about the city’s grant success. More than a dozen parents and students from Paul Ecke Central Elementary, plus William Morrison — vice president of the Leucadia 101 Main Street Association — appeared at the council meeting to give their thanks to Pruim, as well as other city employees and the council members.

“For the Paul Ecke community, this underpass means way more than connecting Vulcan (Avenue) and the 101,” Rebecca Conley, vice president of the PTA, told the council. “It means connecting the parents and the school. It means connecting the families and the kids and our community as a whole.”

Conley noted that Paul Ecke school, which is just east of the railroad tracks, has many students who live on the west side of the tracks and some of those students walk across the tracks every day. The new pedestrian underpass, which will be similar to one at Cardiff’s Santa Fe Drive, will make the kids’ crossings safer and also will help reduce vehicle traffic near the school, Conley said.

“It just makes our entire community and school more accessible, bike-able and walkable, which is what we’re all trying to accomplish here,” she said.


She noted that this was the second time the city had tried for the grant, and said the council’s decision this time around to offer matching money for the project made the difference.

Pruim said the state’s Transportation Commission is expected to give final approval to the grant request at its two-day meeting in October. Once that happens, “we’ll start going forward with the design efforts,” he said.

The grant money will likely be released in three phases, with the building funding coming available in summer 2018, so that’s when the city expects to award the construction contract. The actual construction will move very rapidly because the railroad line can only be shut down for an extremely short period, Pruim said.

During the Santa Fe Drive underpass project, rail traffic was stopped for only 54 hours, he added. The contractors built the box-shaped, concrete tunnel in advance, and then slid it into place during the short railroad shutdown.


El Portal’s underground crossing will look like the Santa Fe one, with similar landscaping and artistic touches, but it may not be as visible to passing motorists on Coast Highway 101 because the topography is lower, Pruim said.

“The good thing for us, is we have a model… it won’t look exactly like Santa Fe, but we have a model,” he added, saying this will help speed design work and construction.

Barbara Henry is a freelance writer.