A woman was killed in Clairemont on Jan. 17 near the intersection of Genesee Avenue and Mount Etna Drive. Police say the driver of the pickup truck that hit her fled the scene, and they are asking witnesses to call 619-231-2900.
The intersection of Genesee and Mount Etna is an entrance to a large shopping center with a Target and a Home Depot, several other shops and restaurants, and four grocery stores. It also has a bus stop on MTS 41, a major connecting line that carried over 700,000 riders in 2024.
On the other side of Genesee Avenue are neighborhood homes and multiple schools.
Also on Mount Etna Drive, a new affordable housing development will soon bring over 300 low-income homes, including 78 for seniors, to the area.
They will be “within walking distance of schools, restaurants, grocery stores, and parks,” according to the San Diego Housing Commission.
Genesee Avenue, however, is built like a highway, creating an unwalkable barrier of speeding cars that bisects the neighborhood. This section is the only place south of SR-52 where the road expands to six total lanes of traffic instead of four.
It was that section where a fatal hit and run occurred.
Balboa Avenue also has six lanes of vehicle traffic, and it’s along roads like these that a lot of new housing in San Diego is being built.
San Diego, like all cities in California, had to submit a plan for future housing growth to the state, and the plan identified potential sites for housing developments.
Thanks to the UCSD Homelessness Hub, a visualization of those sites is available, and many of them are along major roadways.
Several of those roadways are among the most dangerous in San Diego, according to the city. El Cajon Boulevard and Art Street is a high crash location, and this intersection is surrounded by potential sites for new development.
In the Leucadia neighborhood of Encinitas, a woman was killed in a hit and run Jan. 19 on North Coast Highway. Encinitas is planning to locate most of its new housing along this road.
This isn’t unique to San Diego.
Long Beach is planning to locate a large portion of its future housing around similar major corridors, and a report from the Urban Institute found that nearly half of all housing units permitted in Los Angeles since 2013 are within 1,000 meters of a high-traffic road.
In addition to the safety risk created by speeding cars, UC Davis Health says living that close to roadways has serious health consequences, causing respiratory, cardiovascular, and reproductive health problems.
But San Diego leaders have been reluctant to allow denser housing in single-family zoned areas, further away from the busiest streets.
An effort to implement SB-10, which would have allowed up to 10 apartments on single-family zoned land, died in 2023 in the city planning commission.
Some homeowners are finding creative solutions to increase density in their backyards, but the majority of development remains anchored along high-traffic arterial roads.
While the city is working to address safety concerns, it’s a slow process to upgrade all the dangerous roads in San Diego.
When ABC 10News reported on San Diego falling short of its Vision Zero goals last November, Mayor Gloria's office sent a statement.
"Mayor Gloria’s first four budgets invested tens of millions of dollars in making our streets and pedestrian infrastructure safer and more accessible for all travelers, including pedestrians and cyclists.
"The quality of our infrastructure will remain a priority in coming budgets."
At least 14 people have died in traffic in San Diego County so far in 2025; half of them were pedestrians or on bikes.
Eight were killed in the first five days of the new year, according to Coast News, including three pedestrians and one person riding a bike.
Then, a man was killed on Jan. 14 when his car veered off the transition ramp between SR-94 and I-15.
Two women, both pedestrians, were killed that next weekend: on Jan. 17 in Clairemont and on Jan. 19 in Encinitas.
A driver was killed in Miramar Ranch North on Jan. 24, a pedestrian was killed in Escondido on Jan. 25, and a driver was killed in Oceanside on Jan. 26.
With so much more housing positioned along high-traffic streets, unless changes are made to slow down vehicles, more tragedies like these are inevitable.
