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San Diego's UA on the whole is probably more consistently urban than Seattle's, but I don't think it has anything that feels nearly as classically urban as Tacoma outside of SD city limits.
Those both look suburban, like small business districts in the suburbs. They're not what I would call "urban" scenes (and I live in the area and have been to both cities pictured as well as San Diego).
The point of posting those links wasn't to compare them with the great urban districts of the world, just to illustrate that they are part of the urban area, contiguous with the core city.
Oceanside is nearly 40 miles from downtown San Diego, and is connected to it by multiple modes of mass transit:
A problem with this entire series of threads is that "urban streetscape" is not clearly defined.
To me, it means wall-to-wall multistory buildings on both sides of the street with a high density of ground floor retail and narrow streets / limited auto traffic.
In general, post-war cities don't have much if this, because we spent 50+ years primarily building a different style of city that is centered around single occupancy vehicles. San Diego is very much in this post-war model.
Seattle is also one of these post-war suburban cities for the most part. However 1.) It was still 2x bigger than San Diego pre-war, 2.) It is more geographically constrained than San Diego and was forced to build up a bit more for that reason, and 3.) It has in the last twenty years embraced the "new urban" model of mixed-use developments and rejected NIMBY-ism perhaps more than any other city in USA. For those reasons I pick Seattle rather easily in this thread.
I see it as a feature, not a problem. As a patron of the arts, I like the layer of subjectivity it adds to the base layer of objective data.
Are there any plans at all to cap or remove any of the freeways in San Diego?
I'm also curious about who actually voted for San Diego, because while urban and streetscape can be pretty loosely defined, it seems like someone would really have to stretch that to put SD over Seattle at this moment.
Cherry-picking Rainier Beach again? That station is the exception that proves the rule. It's a fact that nearly half of the existing stations in the Link system are underground subway stations. San Diego's light rail system is more like Portland and Denver's. Fine systems, but different from Seattle's in a number of ways.
I'm glad Seattle finally decided to join the rest of the west coast with an interurban rail system in the 2000's, but San Diego pioneered this craft, and these aren't "park and ride" stations:
I'm glad Seattle finally decided to join the rest of the west coast with an interurban rail system in the 2000's, but San Diego pioneered this craft, and these aren't "park and ride" stations:
I think there can be an issue where these stations are in the urban core, but they are not grade-separated which means speed and thus capacity is highly limited and it also may have a higher chance of having an issue. This wouldn't be much of a problem if it's meant to be more of a tram/streetcar, and in a lot of ways that's what San Diego Trolley is save for large parts of the new extension to La Jolla. Seattle's system is quite different in that these sort of at-grade stations exist almost solely in a few lightly trafficked and less dense parts, as you've pointed out earlier, as all the stations in the core are grade-separated which is why it's sometimes referred to as a light metro. Seattle actually converted an existing below-grade *bus* tunnel for its light rail system and then continued to expand below grade.
I do wonder if there are plans to at some point convert or add to the San Diego Trolley system some grade-separated tracks in the downtown core area. I know that Portland is considering it as is Dallas. I haven't heard of similar for San Diego, but I wouldn't be surprised if there's at least a proposal since it'd probably do great.
And Seattle has an actual mostly grade-separate light metro system with many subway stations below dense urban districts. It is rapidly expanding and is much more like a classic urban metro than San Diego's at-grade and largely park and ride oriented Trolley System.
Just so everyone understands, as of right now, Seattle has 26 miles of light rail to service a 4.1 million metro area.
It travels at the same 55 mph top speed as the San Diego Trolley.
We're supposed to marvel at the Link stations that go underground while ignoring the Trolley stations that go above ground.
That's the sleight of hand behind this "light metro" nonsense.
Just so everyone understands, as of right now, Seattle has 26 miles of light rail to service a 4.1 million metro area.
It travels at the same 55 mph top speed as the San Diego Trolley.
We're supposed to marvel at the Link stations that go underground while ignoring the Trolley stations that go above ground.
That's the sleight of hand behind this "light metro" nonsense.
I don't understand why this is a sleight of hand or nonsense. This doesn't mean San Diego Trolley is bad, but a top speed also needs to be paired with average operating speed and reliability and making the part that goes through downtown grade separated obviously has value. Is San Diego not at all considering grade separation in the downtown area? It would seem to make sense as SD's core develops further and especially if ridership keeps going up. There's probably good reason why LA put so much resources in developing the regional connector as a grade-separated underground line rather than previous proposals of putting it a much cheaper option of an at-grade downtown trolley/streetcar. Wouldn't similar benefits hold for San Diego Trolley or why its extension to La Jolla is mostly grade-separated? Doesn't the grade separation to La Jolla bring similar benefits to the line and why they didn't go with a completely at-grade alignment?
I don't understand why this is a sleight of hand or nonsense. This doesn't mean San Diego Trolley is bad, but a top speed also needs to be paired with average operating speed and reliability and making the part that goes through downtown grade separated obviously has value. Is San Diego not at all considering grade separation in the downtown area? It would seem to make sense as SD's core develops further and especially if ridership keeps going up. There's probably good reason why LA put so much resources in developing the regional connector as a grade-separated underground line rather than previous proposals of putting it a much cheaper option of an at-grade downtown trolley/streetcar. Wouldn't similar benefits hold for San Diego Trolley or why its extension to La Jolla is mostly grade-separated? Doesn't the grade separation to La Jolla bring similar benefits to the line and why they didn't go with a completely at-grade alignment?
Its a subtle reframing of reality.
"One of the largest metro areas in the country waited until 2003 to get to work on an interurban rail system" doesn't sound so great, so we get "look at this advanced next generation system that is better than the others."
If not running at grade is its amazing claim to fame, recall that four Los Angeles light rail lines, at various points, run under, at, and above ground with greater top speeds than the Link. They aren't claiming to be special in the light rail game despite having an obviously superior system.
San Diego doesn't go underground, it would be nice if it did for a few of the stops downtown, but I"m guessing MTS doesn't see the juice being worth the squeeze. In the end, its only saving a few minutes, and you also have to consider the time saved by not walking underground to board.
When riding the Trolley, I'd say the parts that feel like a tram/streetcar comprise about 10-15% of the system.
"One of the largest metro areas in the country waited until 2003 to get to work on an interurban rail system" doesn't sound so great, so we get "look at this advanced next generation system that is better than the others."
If not running at grade is its amazing claim to fame, recall that four Los Angeles light rail lines, at various points, run under, at, and above ground with greater top speeds than the Link. They aren't claiming to be special in the light rail game despite having an obviously superior system.
San Diego doesn't go underground, it would be nice if it did for a few of the stops downtown, but I"m guessing MTS doesn't see the juice being worth the squeeze. In the end, its only saving a few minutes, and you also have to consider the time saved by not walking underground to board.
When riding the Trolley, I'd say the parts that feel like a tram/streetcar comprise about 10-15% of the system.
Light metro wasn't a term coined for Seattle's light rail system--if there's an issue you have with reframing of reality then the problem you have is with reality and how language is used.
Seattle did screw up on transit and its screw up was about a half century ago when local voters decided to scuttle a large federal funding package for a far more extensive system, done earlier, and done better. They're instead paying far more for a far more modest system decades later.
There's no claim to fame. Both systems are okay for US systems, but both also ultimately have subpar transit systems compared to that in cities of other developed countries. It's just that Seattle has a better bus system at the moment and its one line has grade separation downtown which has some benefits--and grade separation is extremely common for transit systems for urban areas of their size in the rest of the developed world. All of that doesn't change that that Seattle has a more urban landscape than San Diego despite both having a pretty subpar rail network not just for 2003, but for today as well, and as I understand it, the topic was about today and not 2003.
I don't think it's necessarily San Diego doesn't see the benefits so much as that the cost of infrastructure in the US is absurdly high, that the system did not originally build with that intention likely due to lack of political will to fund such a thing from the beginning and would be disruptive to do at this point and so there's likely going to need a massive amount of political will or general restructuring of how the US deals with infrastructure costs to make work. However, the start of that requires there be a proposal to do so at all, and I'm not sure if San Diego's ever made such a proposal. Do you know if it's done so in the past? Also, what is SD Trolley's expansion plans for the rest of the decade? And have there been any proposals to cap or remove any of the freeways?
Last edited by OyCrumbler; 11-16-2022 at 09:36 PM..
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