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No, rail should not be to just shuttle suburbanites to downtown. It should be for city residents to live a car-free lifestyle and get between all different neighborhoods of the city, or at least the most important, without getting in a car. I should be able to live in Hillcrest and work downtown, but get to Pacific Beach on weekends and bar hop in North Park at night then the next morning take rail to the airport.
North Park is residential, yes, but it is pretty dense and by SD standards is pretty much part of the original urban grid of the city should be livable without a car or at least car-light. Hillcrest is not served by Washington St station lmao it's a 30 minute walk from the main downtown area of Hillcrest. That is not quality public transit access lmao.
Glad you mentioned the new stations opening also. The Balboa Ave station in Pacific Beach will be a 50 MINUTE WALK from the main downtown area of Pacific Beach by the pier. This. Is. Not. Quality. Public. Transit. Is it going to help some people? Yeah. But SD continues to avoid population centers and decides to skirt the actual urban employment/job centers. It prefers building the cheap way and attracting low ridership. Absolutely nobody in Pacific Beach is going to walk nearly 1 hour to the Balboa Ave station if they live near the beach. Absolutely nobody is going to use that station to go to the beach. Absolutely nobody is going to walk from Hillcrest to Washington St to take the trolley. Absolutely nobody is going to take the trolley to Washington St station to go bar hopping in Hillcrest.
That's not my point. You're missing my point and others'. Seattle's bus system is very impressive. SD may have buses, but clearly people are not utilizing them. Whether or not that means the quality is good or bad, I'm not going to comment on. However, the one rail line that Seattle has actually serves the actual urban population and job centers and the streetcar serves another. The future rail lines will similarly serve the urban centers. SD's lines skirt the edges of urban population and job centers. When someone can walk 2 blocks to catch a train in Seattle to get downtown, but someone else in SD has to walk 30-50 minutes to a rail line, which do you think will have more utilization? When tourists in Seattle can hop on a rail system and head straight downtown, but SD has no rail line to the airport, which do you think will have more utilization? It all comes down to accessibility.
You're worst case scenario-ing San Diego to boost Seattle. If it weren't for the recent extension to UW, Link rail's numbers would be down in the dirt with Sacramento.
It's not shuttling suburbanites-its servicing urban/exurb/suburb areas equally, hence "Metro Rail." Just like everywhere else. L.A. Metro has like 4 stations in Pasadena and none in Echo Park or Silver Lake.
I reject the premise that either North Park or Pacific Beach are big hubs that transit should be centered around. If the typical resident profile in those neighborhoods is a corporate transplant from the upper midwest or college kids "living it up" before they go back home I'm not even seeing them use mass transit. Hillcrest could use a station at 1st and Washington only for the medical complex.
PB is nothing compared to Hermosa/Manhattan/Redondo Beach yet is much closer to rail both metro and otherwise. I don't think SANDAG missed anything by not catering specifically to them. PB is a big deal if you're a tourist or a short term transplant, and that's about it.
It makes MUCH more sense to have the Blue Line run along a major artery (Morena Blvd) encouraging transit oriented development all the way from Old Town to La Jolla, than to have it randomly jut out to the beach in the event people there might use it.
Balboa Ave. station will be a park and ride, meaning people from both PB and Claremont Mesa can "park and ride"...ditto for Linda Vista and Mission Beach at the Clairemont Dr. station. AND the Tecolote road station.
This is the most expensive mass transit project in SD history-and they nailed it. It's going to be one of the most relevant LRT lines in the western U.S.
It's also about the system. Buses done decently...reasonable frequencies, routes that get within an easy walk of most residents, lots of HOV lanes, concentrated jobs...can be very effective.
Seattle's buses alone get a far higher commute share than many peer cities' bus+rail systems. Metro Transit (one county) and Sound Transit buses alone had 461,200 riders per weekday, not including the other local systems such as Tacoma's and Everett's, rail, or the ferries.
The San Diego area's sum total transit ridership was 278,000 per weekday.
Again, that's not Seattle being good...it's just that SD, a nice city in other ways, has atrocious transit ridership. It's even atrocious compared to other only moderately-bad ridership cities like LA, Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, and so on.
Again, that's not Seattle being good...it's just that SD, a nice city in other ways, has atrocious transit ridership. It's even atrocious compared to other only moderately-bad ridership cities like LA, Portland, Denver, Minneapolis, and so on.
And I'm saying its not because there is anything wrong with the system.
San Diego gets its share of transplants from parts of the country that have no mass transit whatsoever. I imagine those people either avoid it completely or make half hearted efforts to use it and give up.
I work right next to a guy who comes in late everyday, railing about traffic and the conduct of other cars on the road.
When I mention that his remote suburb has a LRT station w/park and ride that would drop him off five blocks from where we work downtown, he laughs in my face.
Glad you mentioned the new stations opening also. The Balboa Ave station in Pacific Beach will be a 50 MINUTE WALK from the main downtown area of Pacific Beach by the pier. This. Is. Not. Quality. Public. Transit. Is it going to help some people? Yeah. But SD continues to avoid population centers and decides to skirt the actual urban employment/job centers. It prefers building the cheap way and attracting low ridership. Absolutely nobody in Pacific Beach is going to walk nearly 1 hour to the Balboa Ave station if they live near the beach. Absolutely nobody is going to use that station to go to the beach
This is basically like saying "why would they build a subway though the Sepulveda Pass? It's just a dirt canyon! All the people live in Venice and Marina Del Rey. Where is their station?"
And I'm saying its not because there is anything wrong with the system.
San Diego gets its share of transplants from parts of the country that have no mass transit whatsoever. I imagine those people either avoid it completely or make half hearted efforts to use it and give up.
I work right next to a guy who comes in late everyday, railing about traffic and the conduct of other cars on the road.
When I mention that his remote suburb has a LRT station w/park and ride that would drop him off five blocks from where we work downtown, he laughs in my face.
It's not the system.
I'll agree with you here. SoCal gets all the suburban transplants from rural/suburban places throughout the country looking for a similarly suburban place just with better weather. Firsthand experience: NJ wants to move to LA because they want their car and good weather. Meanwhile, NYC will never move to LA because they want urban living and public transit. Obviously there are exceptions, but those hold up true more often than not. LA attracts suburbanites who want city living with a car culture in good weather. SD does the same. You can't change the mindset of people in SoCal to actually use public transit and it will always be focused on "build more public transit so those people use it and then the traffic will be better for my driving commute."
As for the Sepulveda Pass subway, if it was just that, it would be useless. However, it's going to connect to at least one other rail line, so while it may shuttle people from the SFV into the LA Basin, it will be dropping them off at a subway station that can take them to the rest of LA. SD's rail lines shuttle suburban dwellers in/out of downtown and that's about it. It's not good for intra-city travel.
I'm also not boosting Seattle. For however much a city bug I might be, I don't like Seattle and I'd live in SD over Seattle any day. It doesn't change the facts that Seattle's one rail line currently serves intra-city travel and the more populated job/residential/tourist areas of Seattle.
I drive about 5-7 miles a week, only to and from Old Town Transit center to connect with the bus or trolley downtown. If I wake up late, I take Lyft line to work and trolley/bus combo home. I don't drive anywhere unless there is no choice (medical appointment, etc.). Attended photography school on weekends in L.A./Pasadena without driving once.
If a new bar/restaurant opens up out of reach of transit-guess what, I"m sure they have a competitor along a transit line, that's where I'll spend my money. Its how I support transit oriented development.
Good on you for this. If only there were more folks in your area like you.
I like Seattle. It reminds me of San Diego in many ways.
Please let us know when it gets more than 3 northbound and 5 southbound Amtrak departures so it can begin competing with midwest/sunbelt cities with intercity rail!
Are we talking about Amtrak in Seattle? It has more frequent Amtrak service than just about any US city outside of Chicago, the Northeast Corridor, and a few in California. Part of that is because Cascades actually through-runs within Seattle.
For Northbound service, four round trips on Cascades and one round trip on Empire Builder.
For Southbound service, eight rounds trips on Cascades and one round trip on Coast Starlight.
San Diego has more service with twelve roundtrips on the Pacific Surfliner with San Diego's Santa Fe Depot being the southern terminus. Overall, they both have fairly substantial service for US cities.
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 06-19-2019 at 11:33 AM..
At least it's not like the suburban Atlanta mindset of "I never want a rail line near my house because it will allow those people easy access to break in to my house and steal my TV and then escape on a train".
That's what we're working with out here in Virginia Beach.
I'll agree with you here. SoCal gets all the suburban transplants from rural/suburban places throughout the country looking for a similarly suburban place just with better weather. Firsthand experience: NJ wants to move to LA because they want their car and good weather. Meanwhile, NYC will never move to LA because they want urban living and public transit. Obviously there are exceptions, but those hold up true more often than not. LA attracts suburbanites who want city living with a car culture in good weather. SD does the same. You can't change the mindset of people in SoCal to actually use public transit and it will always be focused on "build more public transit so those people use it and then the traffic will be better for my driving commute."
That's a good point and I agree with you overall, but I do think among the 66%+ of people who voted for the last two massive transit expansion measures in LA, there's a strong contingent of people who want the system to be better because they themselves want to be able to rely on it more.
That's a good point and I agree with you overall, but I do think among the 66%+ of people who voted for the last two massive transit expansion measures in LA, there's a strong contingent of people who want the system to be better because they themselves want to be able to rely on it more.
This mentality has to be exponentially worse in San Diego. The average person here is happy we lost NFL and voted down MLS and thinks the single runway airport is just great.
You always hear the "mumble mumble California people importing their politics etc." from around the country about transplants from CA, but never the flip side of this coin-people from middle America and the south importing megaburbia big-box culture into Southern California.
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