"It will still be expected to flood during big storm events because it remains within a floodway." That is Kris Ekert, a senior civil engineer with the City of San Diego's stormwater department, describing the project meant to fix the flooding under the Carmel Country Road bridge.
The Carmel Valley Community Planning Board approved the city's plan unanimously on July 23, 2026. The plan raises the crossing so that light rain stops closing it. Heavy rain will still close it, and that is by design. The water backs up because of a creek channel the city treats as off-limits to maintenance, and it will keep backing up for at least two more rainy seasons.
Where the Water Sits
The trouble spot is a low-flow channel crossing of Carmel Creek. The SR-56 bike path dips under Carmel Country Road there, comes out beside a drainage pond, and then follows the edge of the Palacio Del Mar neighborhood. After almost any rain, water spills over the trail and leaves it impassable and unsafe.
This is a long-running problem. Matt Bartelt, president of the San Diego Mountain Bike Association, told the board that "the standing water under Carmel Country Road has been an issue for better than the last 10 years….it's slippery and dangerous." Riders reported flooding under Carmel Country Road on Trailforks as far back as January 17, 2023.
The location matters because of what the path connects. Bartelt called the path a critical part of the San Diego Regional Bike Network, linking I-15 to the coast. When this one dip floods, the whole route is cut in the middle.
Why the City Is Raising the Path Instead of Clearing the Creek
Downstream of the bridge is the Carmel Valley Restoration Enhancement Project, known locally as CVREP. It was created as mitigation for building SR-56. It is meant to be dense riparian habitat that traps sediment before it reaches Los Peñasquitos Lagoon. The city's community plan includes the CVREP corridor and the Carmel Creek floodway in the Multiple Habitat Planning Area preserve.
Those protections explain the design. "It functions as a protected wetland and riparian habitat corridor regulated by environmental agencies," said Anthony Salvani, an associate civil engineer with the city. "Because of its environmental protection, large-scale modifications are generally not feasible." Ekert was more direct, calling the channel "pretty much a no-touch as far as doing maintenance."
The planning board itself pointed to the channel as a likely cause. With its approval, it urged the city to make serious efforts to clean up CVREP, which has filled with dense vegetation over the years and may be adding to the pooling under the bridge.
A Carmel Valley resident has opposed the project for a long time. The resident's letter, read into the record, said the floodplain has gone unmanaged long enough to turn Carmel Creek into "less of a low flow and more of a no flow." In the resident's telling, seven existing drain pipes once handled the low-flow channel well and are now underwater. The standing water that replaced them is "foul-smelling" and has become home to invasive red slider turtles.
Board member Kevin Jasper supported the project. He also agreed that the standing water will likely remain a problem unless conditions downstream are fixed.
The city's answer has two parts. Inside the project area, the crossing work will remove sediment and address non-native plants. For the wider corridor, Ekert said the city is open to exploring separate habitat-management projects in CVREP. So far, that remains an offer. The planning board's August 27 minutes list nothing under old or ongoing business, and the September 24 agenda has only one action item, Villa Costa Vista.
What Two Feet Buys
The engineering is simple:
- The bike path will be raised by two feet.
- Six new box culverts will carry water underneath.
- Safety railings will run along the raised crossing.
The city's own description sets the limits. "The design provides improved usability by reducing interruptions from minor rain events," Ekert said. Bartelt accepted that framing. He said the project won't cure every flooding problem, but raising the path two feet will help.
The cost estimate dropped by a million dollars once the board pushed back. Ekert said a closer review found misplaced items in the estimate, and the figure fell from $3.7 million to $2.7 million. The city budget has $8 million in developer impact fees set aside for the project. Board member Adam Fox made the motion to approve and had mixed feelings about the savings. "On the one hand that's great that you found a million dollars, on the other hand it's scary that we told you to sharpen your pencils and you found a million," he said.
The project already went through community outreach. At the planning board's request, the city met with the Palacio Del Mar Homeowners Association twice, once in May and again at a June 24 town hall attended by about 40 people. Nobody from the neighborhood spoke at the July 23 vote.
The Calendar From Here
The board's vote is a concurrence, not a construction start. The city still needs permits from four agencies:
- California Coastal Commission
- California Department of Fish and Wildlife
- U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
- San Diego Regional Water Control Board, as the Union-Tribune report names it
If that schedule holds, here is what each winter looks like starting now, in October 2026:
| Rainy season | Condition at the Carmel Country Road dip |
|---|---|
| 2026–27 | Same crossing as today; floods after rain |
| 2027–28 | Construction expected to start in fall 2027; trail users detoured over the Carmel Country Road bridge |
| 2028–29 | First winter with the raised crossing, if work wraps up by fall 2028 as expected; big storms can still close it |
The year-long detour sends riders, runners and walkers up to street level and over the bridge. The planning board asked the city to keep that alternate route as safe as possible.
The Trail That Runs Beside It
The same corridor has a second route that the bike path debate rarely mentions. The Marvin Gerst Trail, also called the CVREP trail, runs about three miles south of SR-56, from the eastern edge of Palacio Del Mar west to El Camino Real. A 1990 plan amendment put a separate equestrian trail and a pedestrian and bicycle path inside a 50-foot open-space buffer south of the enhanced Carmel Creek floodway.
A city parks report describes two surfaces side by side. An asphalt lane serves bicycles and strollers, and a softer gravel lane is meant for walkers and horses. The same report, which predates this year's project, said Palacio Del Mar's HOA maintains the section east of Carmel Country Road and the city maintains the section to the west.
The most recent first-hand account is an AllTrails review dated September 3, 2026. It describes the trail as dry and well kept, with a shaded sandy path separate from the paved bike path. That review is one user's report from a dry month. No official condition notice for the trail turned up, so after a storm the trail is no more predictable than the bike path dip.
The two routes share a cause. CVREP is the habitat that gives the Marvin Gerst Trail its shade and its creekside setting. It is also the overgrown channel that the city says it cannot dredge and that residents blame for the standing water under the bridge.
The Rest of the Corridor
The Carmel Country Road dip is the one place on the path with repeated reports. That stands out more because it sits on a corridor that has become better connected in recent years.
Published lengths for the SR-56 bike path range from about 8 to nearly 11 miles. SANDAG calls it an 8-mile path, Trailforks maps 9.2 miles, and TrailLink lists 10.8 miles from a dead end in Carmel Valley to Sabre Springs Parkway. The sources likely count different segments.
At the west end, Caltrans opened a bike undercrossing beneath I-5 in 2024. It links the SR-56 path at Old Sorrento Valley Road to the North Coast Bike Trail, the Coastal Rail Trail and the west-side park-and-ride. At the east end, an undated route guide describes a short break at Rancho Peñasquitos Boulevard. Riders take Azuaga Street for 0.7 mile to the next section, which runs another 0.7 mile over I-15 to Sabre Springs Parkway. TrailLink lists parking at Carmel Mountain Preserve, 11600 Clews Ranch Road.
The path has other low spots, but they have far less documentation. One Trailforks user reported the Carmel Mountain underbridge flooded on August 21, 2023, and suggested the road crossing as a bypass. That is a single post from three years ago. The Carmel Country Road crossing has a decade of complaints, a city engineering design and a $2.7 million estimate behind it, and it will still close in big storms after the work is done.
Trail access is part of daily life in Carmel Valley, from which streets connect to the Marvin Gerst Trail to how the SR-56 corridor fits into a weekly routine. If you'd like a discreet conversation about how that plays out street by street, Debe McInnis is glad to share what three decades in coastal North County have shown her.
