Region Needs a Transportation Plan

Traffic & Transit

By Scott Peters
February 17, 2002

Over the next five years, Caltrans will be widening the Interstate 5/Interstate 805 merge to 24 lanes. Yet, instead of whoops of joy from merge-weary commuters, I hear sighs of resignation.

There is a well-founded skepticism about whether all that new concrete will have a positive impact on traffic congestion. And there is exasperation over the challenges we will continue to face in our daily commutes around the city.

Our region has long been engaged in a lot of unproductive political hand wringing over whether growth is good or not. Meanwhile, we've grown. And we will continue to grow, like it or not.

The projected growth of a million new San Diegans in the next 30 years will come largely from births in San Diego, not from people moving here. If we do nothing to address the effects of this certain growth, we will continue to experience traffic gridlock, housing shortages, and environmental degradation. We can try something different, something requiring vision and a new way of thinking, but we cannot simply decide not to grow.

In the near term, we must build and improve roads to address traffic problems, but then what? Even if we build all the roads on the books, our transportation system can't move our current population. And we are out of room to add more lanes to most roads.

In other cities, public transportation is the obvious answer, and an answer that works. Unfortunately, a transportation expert recently reported to the City Council what everyone already knows: "San Diego's existing transit system is slow, infrequent, underfunded, indirect and offers mostly a basic level of service."

Even now, the only future transit project planned north from Old Town is the "Mid-Coast Line," a 10.7-mile trolley line that will pass through the University of California San Diego and terminate at the University Towne Centre shopping center by 2015. That's over $800 million for a vehicle that will travel an average of 23 miles per hour, hugging I-5 (the same corridor already served by the Coaster) while avoiding key residential, employment and education facilities that would use transit. This emperor has no clothes.

Can we do better with $800 million? Of course, but we have to radically re-engineer our public transportation plans and planning.

First, we need to dump the current Mid-Coast Line in favor of a new vision. "Transit First," a strategy endorsed by the Metropolitan Transit Development Board and the San Diego Association of Governments, employs "flex-trolleys," trolley-like vehicles that travel on tires on lanes and bridges built and dedicated to transit use. The idea is to get people directly from where they are to where they want to go, do it without a lot of waiting or transfers, make it pleasant, and build the system at a per-mile cost that is a fraction the cost of a trolley line.

And we can start this system now using money already allocated for the Mid-Coast line, in the heart of our mid-coast -- UCSD, University City, Sorrento Mesa and Sorrento Valley. This area, recently dubbed "Technopolis," is now the region's primary job center and is overwhelmed by traffic congestion. If we can improve internal traffic circulation there, we will make a significant impact on getting people to and from their jobs from throughout the region.

Second, we have to dismantle and rebuild the disjointed structure of transportation planning in the county. Currently, the MTDB is responsible for transit planning in the south, while the North County Transit District is responsible for planning transit in the north. The job-rich mid-coast region, on the periphery of both agencies' borders, is ignored. Another agency, SANDAG, makes decisions on funding for transit and roads, and Caltrans builds many of the major roads.

Transportation planning in our region is inevitably uncoordinated and ineffective. We are one region, and we need one agency for surface transportation. Real improvement will not happen without consolidating these organizations, and there is no reason to wait any longer.

Finally, once we have a real plan for our present and future mobility, we have to be serious about linking future development to that transportation system.

Our city needs to think honestly and critically about whether we are under-building our downtown, the heart of the billion-dollar transit system we do have. And all of us have to think hard about finding places for new San Diegans to live. If the only affordable housing for those who work in San Diego is in Temecula, for example, it will come as no surprise that our highway traffic will increase.

The City of Villages is one concept that could work. In theory, it makes sense to densify development around a transportation system that links the "villages" of our region. But without real commitment to visionary solutions to our traffic congestion challenges, the City of Villages is just a theory, and the reality will be City of Los Angeles.

The only way to retain our San Diego quality of life is to grow around a transportation system that works. The heart of any growth plan must be a transportation plan.

Peters is a member of the San Diego City Council. He represents District 1, which includes Carmel Valley, La Jolla and Sorrento Valley.

Transit & Traffic Links

Union Tribune Opinion Article - Coaster train station survives for time being

Union Tribune Opinion Article "Region Needs a Transportation Plan" by Scott Peters

SANDAG's Regional Transportation Strategy: Transit First

I-15 Managed Lanes Project

Transit First Mid-Coast Strategy

I-5/805 Expansion Project