How do you feel about the trolley, and mass transit in general? (San Diego: insurance, loan)

[sonarrat]

Our light-rail is useless. It takes me 40 minutes just to get to the light rail stop.. and that's only 5 miles away!!

[T. Damon]

San Diego Mass Transit does have a lot to improve upon but as others have pointed out it does make a huge difference if you live in the older, denser parts of the city or the newer outlying 'burbs. I cant speak to much for other transit lines as far as convenience or crime but our bus line is a two minute walk from our house and will take you downtown and to the Marina or into North Park, and on to Adams Ave in just minutes, every 10 minutes. The busses are new and clean generally. We often do a pub/restaurant crawl with the neighbors to all the new spots with no worries about parking or drinking and driving. I've even taken it to the airport a couple of times with the one transfer. Yeah, it is sometimes late and there are more than a few colorful characters at the stops that will raise your eyebrows but I've never been accosted by anything more scary than a talkative drunk.
I would say that I am a rare breed for California though. We have cars and certainly have the money to operate them whenever we want, but choose to live in the city where we can have a happening lifestyle while our cars get dusty and cobwebbed sometimes. We will walk downtown from our house just for fun or need just because we can. A lot of my friends look at me with feigned horror at the thought of using public transit and have never set a foot on a bus or trolley in their lives.
I rather like the thought of not needing or having a car as I get older in this home and neighborhood and still have the ability to get around. Many folks demand light rail or other modern transit options in neighborhoods that simply don't have the density to support it and equally refuse to up the density zoning in areas immediately adjacent potential routes. If you choose all that low density to live you don't generally are not deserving of the choice of Mass Transit as well. There are no easy or cheap solutions or answers but there are successful models that can be implemented to improve the system.

[alanbmx]

mass transit is a waste of tax dollars
the only section of the trolly that makes money is the original route to the border
All the trolly does is bring low lifes to east county, the Lemon Grove station is a joke
How many empty busses do you see driving around San Diego

[jetgraphics]

Originally Posted by alanbmx

mass transit is a waste of tax dollars

Electric powered rail mass transit, privately funded, is not a waste of tax dollars. Instead of giving tax payer money, just grant a zero tax liability to the rail based mass transit companies and their employees.
Since the only way they can make a profit is to serve more and more customers, you will see a renaissance of frugal and efficient mass transit.

[oddstray]

I seriously wish San Diego had serious mass transit.

I currently commute, one driver in a car, ten minutes each way, to work. On I-15 which is quite congested (I'm lucky enough to live close to where I work).

If I took the bus, I would have:
20 minutes to walk to the bus stop
20 minutes to wait for the bus
20 minutes to get to my end bus stop
10 minutes to walk from there to work.

So, 10 minutes in my one-driver car one way, or 70 minutes on mass transit one way?

I'd love to let someone else drive and keep my car off the road. But not a 60-minutes' difference worth!

[SEAandATL]

Originally Posted by oddstray

I seriously wish San Diego had serious mass transit.

I currently commute, one driver in a car, ten minutes each way, to work. On I-15 which is quite congested (I'm lucky enough to live close to where I work).

If I took the bus, I would have:
20 minutes to walk to the bus stop
20 minutes to wait for the bus
20 minutes to get to my end bus stop
10 minutes to walk from there to work.

So, 10 minutes in my one-driver car one way, or 70 minutes on mass transit one way?

I'd love to let someone else drive and keep my car off the road. But not a 60-minutes' difference worth!

I know what you mean. I did some searches on the travel times on sdcommute.com and compared it with the driving time on Google Maps, and here are the results:

Santee to La Jolla Village:

by transit - 1 hr 35 min.
by car - 25 min.

Santee to Gaslamp

by transit - 1 hr 15 min.
by car - 21 min.

Santee to Coronado

by transit - 1 hr 45 min.
by car - 30 min.

[Huckleberry3911948]

i find it most strange when people get on CDF and pitch mass transit hard. whole lota things guna happen when you get off the trolley at 47th and market at night.
what is even more strange is that there are no stats on some of the major systems as to crime.
i have read a number of threads pointing this out on CDF.
i think we gota clean up the mean streets b4 people line up for mass transit. the reverse movement is occuring in france, the streets got mean there too, they got trains they got buses but everybody tries to get a little car to avoid the thugs.

[Radical347]

Originally Posted by Huckleberry3911948

i find it most strange when people get on CDF and pitch mass transit hard. whole lota things guna happen when you get off the trolley at 47th and market at night.

Yeah...but whole lota things probably not guna happen when you get off the trolley at Little Italy/Fenton Pkwy/Convention Ctr/etc etc at night. I see what you're saying, but I honestly don't think it's much of an issue in most of San Diego.

[jetgraphics]

Originally Posted by SEAandATL

here are the results:

Santee to La Jolla Village:

by transit - 1 hr 35 min.
by car - 25 min.
by car with no gas - ???

Santee to Gaslamp

by transit - 1 hr 15 min.
by car - 21 min.
by car with no gas - ???

Santee to Coronado

by transit - 1 hr 45 min.
by car - 30 min.
by car with no gas - ???

Things we know or expect to happen:
[A] Fossil fuels will cease being cheap and / or plentiful.
[b] Energy derived from non-fossil fuel sources is still more expensive. But that may change as [A] gets worse. But at least sustainable sources of energy won't suddenly run out.
[C] The most viable sustainable form of energy is electricity - derived from solar, wind, water, and so on.
[D] The most energy efficient form of land transport is steel wheel on steel rail (low coefficient of rolling resistance).

Internal combustion engines, on average, only use 25% of the energy of their fuel to move. The remainder is lost as waste heat. (Yipes!). Even vaunted hybrid electric vehicles are still energy wasters. To compound matters, stop - and - go travel wastes energy via braking (heat) and acceleration.

Won't the 35.5 MPH goal save us?
NO

We know there are six principles for efficient surface transport:
a) reduce the frontal area per person;
b) reduce the vehicle’s weight per person;
c) when traveling, go at a steady speed and avoid using brakes;
d) travel more slowly;
e) travel less; and
f) make the energy chain more efficient.

An electric powered train / tram / streetcar meets a, b, c (*regenerative braking recovers energy), and f. And we'd rather be able to ignore d and e.

An electric traction motor efficiency is between 85 - 95% (depending on configuration, etc), in contrast with Internal combustion engines (roughly from 25% otto cycle to 50% diesel cycle). In addition, electric powered vehicles do not need to carry their fuel, saving on weight.

In short, we need to acknowledge that electric rail is our only viable alternative to deal with the demise of the Age of Oil.

[YoungSanDiegoDude]

I use the bus/trolley to commute every day to and from work, and for me, it has been a decent experience. I think that for getting around certain areas of the city (i.e. downtown, mission valley), it is great, but is HORRIBLE if you are trying to go anywhere North (i.e. North County, La Jolla, Pacific Beach, ect.). Sometimes, the buses and the trolley will be running incredibly late. In general, you really need to have a car out here in SD (like the rest of So Cal) to get out and be able to enjoy everything. Now if San Diego had a mass transit system like Singapore's or the Bay Areas, you wouldn't need a car.