State Route 11 (SR 11) is a

state highway A state highway, state road, or state route (and the equivalent provincial highway, provincial road, or provincial route) is usually a road that is either ''numbered'' or ''maintained'' by a sub-national state or province. A road numbered by a ...

in the U.S. state of

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. The first phase of the highway opened in 2016, connecting SR 125 and SR 905 with Enrico Fermi Drive in the

Otay Mesa Otay Mesa ( ) is a community in the southern section of the city of San Diego, just north of the U.S.–Mexico border. It is bordered by the Otay River Valley and the city of Chula Vista on the north; Interstate 805 and the neighborhoods of Oc ...

area of

San Diego San Diego ( , ; ) is a city on the Pacific Ocean coast of Southern California located immediately adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a 2020 population of 1,386,932, it is the List of United States cities by population, eigh ...

. It is planned to be extended from Enrico Fermi Drive to the proposed U.S.–Mexico border crossing at Otay Mesa East. There are also plans for an interchange at Siempre Viva Road and to convert the highway to a toll road once the entire route is completed. Planning for the road began in the 1990s, and construction started in 2013.

Route description

SR 11 is proposed to be a toll facility that will serve a new border crossing east of Otay Mesa, the

Otay Mesa East Port of Entry The Otay Mesa East Port of Entry is a planned border crossing between San Diego and Tijuana, approximately 2 miles east of the existing Otay Mesa Port of Entry. The crossing will connect the Otay Centenario borough of Tijuana with East Otay Mes ...

. It will connect SR 125 and SR 905 to the Corredor Tijuana-Rosarito 2000 corridor that connects to

Mexican Federal Highway 2D Federal Highway 2D ( es, Carretera Federal 2D, Fed. 2D) is a part of the federal highways corridors ( es, los corredores carreteros federales), and is the designation for toll highways paralleling Mexican Federal Highway 2. Seven road segmen ...

and

Mexican Federal Highway 2 Federal Highway 2 ( es, Carretera Federal 2, Fed. 2) is a free part of the Mexican federal highway corridors () that runs along the U.S. border. The highway is in two separate improved segments, starting in the west at Tijuana, Baja Califor ...

Tecate Tecate () is a city in Tecate Municipality, Baja California. It is across the Mexico-US border from Tecate, California. As of 2019, the city had a population of 108,860 inhabitants, while the metropolitan area has a population of 132,406 inha ...

, and

Mexican Federal Highway 1D Federal Highway 1D ( es, Carretera Federal 1D, Fed. 1D) is a tolled ( es, cuota) part of the Mexico Federal Highways, paralleling Fed. 1. There are two segments, one in the state of Baja California and another in the state of Baja Ca ...

to Ensenada. , the portion from SR 125 and SR 905 to Enrico Fermi Drive is completed. On that segment, plans were to construct two interchanges at Enrico Fermi Drive and Siempre Viva Road as the proposed route curves to the southeast before reaching the border crossing. SR 11 will operate as a toll road once the entire route is completed.

History

SR 11 was re-added to the state highway system in 1994. Four years later, several parties, including District 11 of the

California Department of Transportation The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is an executive department of the U.S. state of California. The department is part of the cabinet-level California State Transportation Agency (CalSTA). Caltrans is headquartered in Sacrame ...

(Caltrans), the

City A city is a human settlement of notable size.Goodall, B. (1987) ''The Penguin Dictionary of Human Geography''. London: Penguin.Kuper, A. and Kuper, J., eds (1996) ''The Social Science Encyclopedia''. 2nd edition. London: Routledge. It can be def ...

and

County A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposesChambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

of San Diego, the

San Diego Association of Governments The San Diego Association of Governments (abbreviated SANDAG) is an association of local San Diego County governments. It is the metropolitan planning organization for the County, with policy makers consisting of mayors, councilmembers, and County ...

, and

Tijuana Tijuana ( ,"Tijuana"
(US) and < ...

were signatories to a Letter of Intent to build the border crossing. The route was added to the

California Freeway and Expressway System The California Freeway and Expressway System is a system of existing or planned freeways and expressways in the U.S. state of California. It encompasses both State highways and federal highways in California. It is defined by Article 2 (commenci ...

in 1999. In 2009, Senate Bill 1486 was passed, and the presidential permit in 2008 allowed for the border crossing to be constructed. By the following year, several alternatives were considered to construct some or even none of the interchanges or remove the proposed toll on the route. State funding is allocated to cover much of the $400 million costs, not including the port of entry for another $350 million. The California Transportation Commission endorsed the project in January 2012, and approved the proposed freeway route that December.
Before being upgraded to a freeway between Britannia Boulevard and Siempre Viva Road, SR 905 directly connected with SR 125 via two at-grade intersections on Otay Mesa Road. When Caltrans opened that segment of the SR 905 freeway in 2010, they omitted the interchange with SR 125, forcing traffic on SR 905 and SR 125 to exit their respective freeways and use Otay Mesa Road (which SR 905 followed at that time) to make the connection. To help fix this problem, a direct freeway-to-freeway interchange was planned, which also included SR 11 once it was to be constructed, with construction beginning in late 2015. Ramps from SR 905 eastbound to SR 125 northbound, SR 905 westbound to SR 125 northbound, and SR 11 westbound to SR 125 northbound were completed on November 30, 2016, at the cost of over $21 million. Prior to December 16, 2021, traffic on southbound SR 125 was forced to exit onto Otay Mesa Road at that toll road's then southern terminus in order to connect to SR 11 and SR 905. Construction on the ramps for these connections began in 2018, with the ramps from SR 125 southbound to SR 11 eastbound and SR 125 southbound to SR 905 eastbound being completed on December 16, 2021, at the cost of $74 million. The ramp from SR 125 southbound to SR 905 westbound, which was still under construction at the time, was initially scheduled to open to traffic in 2023, but was instead opened to traffic on July 26, 2022, finally completing the interchange. There are no plans to construct the remaining connections from SR 905 westbound to SR 11 eastbound and SR 11 westbound to SR 905 eastbound.

Future

Plans are to construct the road in three stages: the interchange with SR 125 and SR 905 and the road to Enrico Fermi Drive, continuing the construction to the commercial vehicle facility, and building the border crossing itself. The first part of construction—connecting to SR 905—started on December 10, 2013, and was completed on March 19, 2016. The entire road was completed in 2017. Tolls are planned for the road in order to keep delays for crossing the border low, and this would vary depending on the current traffic at the other crossings in the area. The funds would go to both countries. The second phase, connecting to the future Otay Mesa East Port of Entry, began construction in August 2019 and is scheduled to be completed in late 2021. Construction of the port of entry is scheduled to begin in 2022 and finish in 2024.

Exit list

References

External links