San Diego’s bike network may look impressive on paper, but a new grand jury report says the reality on the ground is a lot bumpier for people on two wheels.
A county civil grand jury released a 33‑page report Thursday that applauds the city’s recent push for protected bike lanes while warning that the system still leaves too many riders exposed. The panel points to maintenance lapses, “start and stop” corridors and uneven investment that it says keep would‑be cyclists off the road and undercut San Diego’s climate and Vision Zero goals. The report lays out a checklist of fixes and, under state law, forces local officials to formally respond.
The report, titled “Shifting Gears,” holds up recent projects on Pershing Drive and Clairemont Drive as signs of progress, but criticizes routes that drop riders into fast traffic with little warning. As reported by 10News, the grand jury urges the city to focus on continuous, destination‑oriented routes and to deliver quicker stand‑alone fixes instead of waiting years to fold improvements into big repaving jobs.
Key Numbers And Where The Network Breaks Down
According to the San Diego County Civil Grand Jury, San Diego has roughly 1,900 miles of bikeways compared with about 6,600 miles of automobile roadways. Of that bike mileage, about 203.4 miles are Class I multi‑use paths and roughly 1,224.2 miles are painted Class II lanes.
The panel notes the city maintains about 63.7 miles of protected Class IV cycle tracks but found many of those lanes narrow, chopped up into short segments and littered with debris. The jury’s review also shows the city issued 2,740 citations for bike‑lane obstructions between Dec. 1, 2024, and Dec. 20, 2025.
Maintenance Squeeze Leaves Protected Lanes Dirty And Tight
The City has only one operable street sweeper configured for Class IV Bicycle Tracks, the grand jury wrote, warning that having a single sweeper and an ad‑hoc maintenance schedule leaves protected lanes clogged with gravel, trash and overgrown vegetation.
The panel recommends the city buy a second sweeper, set up routine patrols for protected lanes and stop putting off small continuity fixes while waiting for larger bundled projects to advance, according to the report.
Budget Tug‑Of‑War Puts Progress At Risk
The timing of those recommendations is not great for bike advocates. Mayor Todd Gloria’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget at one point put the city’s multimodal engineering team, the group that designs many bike projects, on the chopping block. That raised alarms among supporters who worried San Diego could lose the staff capacity it needs to plan and build new lanes.
As 10News reported, city leaders said the proposal was meant to concentrate limited dollars on the most critical traffic‑safety work while the broader budget gets hammered out.
Equity Gaps, School Safety And Transit Connections
The grand jury also asks who is actually benefiting from the city’s better bike infrastructure. The report flags corridors east of 28th Street, Martin Luther King Jr. Way, Imperial Avenue and Ocean View Boulevard as low‑income areas that lack continuous bike routes and, as a result, miss out on safe, everyday mobility options.
The panel found that only about one in 20 San Diego Unified School District campuses had an active Safe Routes to School program. It also urges the city to make bike lockers app‑accessible and to work with the regional transit agency to improve bike capacity on buses, as detailed by The San Diego Union‑Tribune.
What Happens Next
Responses to grand jury findings are governed by state law, which requires agencies to state whether they agree with each finding and to explain what they plan to do about it and on what timeline. The rules are spelled out in Penal Code §933.05.
In practical terms, the report hands city leaders a very specific to‑do list: buy a second sweeper, prioritize closing network gaps now instead of later, make bike lockers easier to use and boost bike‑on‑bus capacity.
“Shifting Gears” singles out Clairemont Drive as a local model of connected, gap‑free design and cites Pershing Drive as a high‑profile project that moved faster because of safety concerns. With a budget fight, a maintenance backlog and a formal response clock all ticking at once, the next few weeks of public statements and council action will reveal whether San Diego turns the grand jury’s critique into quicker, more equitable upgrades for riders across the city.
