A long-envisioned Purple Line trolley remains in limbo as transit officials work through the details over how and whether to build the rail connection between downtown Chula Vista and the city of San Diego’s Kearny Mesa neighborhood.
The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System now appears to be leaning away from paying for the line as part of a roughly $24 billion tax measure slated to go before voters later this year.
However, the San Diego Association of Governments has signaled an eagerness to incorporate the route’s alignment into plans for a regional high-speed rail system.
For months, control over the future of the region’s rail system has stoked tension between MTS and SANDAG, the region’s primary transportation and planning agency.
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SANDAG officials have criticized the trolley as too slow and are in the midst of designing a massive new transit system, which would need its own tax hike to become a reality.
Supervisor Nathan Fletcher, who recently took over as the head of the MTS board of directors, said he favors allowing SANDAG to design and pay for the construction of a new Purple Line, rather than have his transit agency foot the bill. Although, he said MTS would be willing to commit several million dollars to help jump-start the planning process.
“Our board is committed to the Purple Line concept, and we’re willing to invest resources to that end,” he said. “I think the best opportunity to do that is to partner with SANDAG.”
Fletcher’s position is something of a departure from that of his predecessor, San Diego City Council President Georgette Gómez, who resigned as MTS board chair after announcing a congressional bid last year.
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The discussion over the future of the Purple Line comes as MTS released last month a list of transit projects the agency’s board will eventually select from in order to craft its 50-year tax proposal.
Top among them is nearly $2 billion trolley extension to the San Diego International Airport.
A Metropolitan Transit System trolley from downtown San Diego pulls into the Old Town Station. MTS would like to build a trolley extension to the San Diego Airport.
(Nelvin C. Cepeda/The San Diego Union-Tribune)
Other ideas put forward by MTS staff include constructing a sky tram connecting University City and Sorrento Valley, as well as dramatically expanding the region’s network of Rapid buses. The well-used service shuttles commuters between residential and job centers with limited stops, often using dedicated transit lanes.
Polling released by MTS in November found the most popular way for the agency to spend any new tax revenue would be to extend service hours on existing transit routes and create a trolley extension to the airport.
While the Purple Line has long been a priority of advocates for working and poor residents, it ranked near the bottom of all project proposals, according to the MTS Vision Builder survey.
If SANDAG picks up the tab for the trolley line, it would allow MTS to roughly double the amount of bus improvements it could pay for.
It would also please SANDAG Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata, who’s pledged to pay some incarnation of the Purple Line as part of his own tax measure, which could be before voters as early as 2022.
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“We’re together on this because there’s one planning agency in the region. That’s SANDAG.” Ikhrata said. “We build. They operate.”
MTS estimates the Purple Line would cost roughly $8.2 billion and could be completed by 2045 — running between the Blue Line’s E Street Station in Chula Vista and Kearny Mesa in San Diego. The project would also include station stops in National City, Southeast San Diego, City Heights and Mission Valley.
Ikhrata said his high-speed-rail system would be significantly faster than the trolley, while servicing the general alignment proposed for the Purple Line. His approach would also be significantly more expensive, requiring a mix of underground and elevated tracks to avoid displacing residents where tracks cut through urban areas.
Transit advocates who’ve long called for building the Purple Line to serve working-class residents have said they also back the plan.
“We want MTS to find some funding for the Purple Line to kick it off, but we want SANDAG to be the lead agency on building it,” said Vianney Ruvalcaba, transportation and planning coordinator with City Heights Community Development Corporation. “SANDAG has made it clear that they’re willing to be the keepers of the Purple Line.”
The City Heights CDC has spearheaded a coalition to lobby on transit issues, which includes the Environmental Health Coalition, San Ysidro Chamber of Commerce, several labor organizations and other advocacy groups.
Still, MTS doesn’t seem ready to cede all control over planning to SANDAG. The transit agency appears wedded to its plan to connect the trolley system to the airport — a very popular project, according to recent polling.
It’s not clear how the transit agency’s design would fit into SANDAG’s long-term blueprint, which includes a $4.7 billion Grand Central Station to connect its envisioned high-speed rail to the airport.
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“That’s where I disagree with them,” Ikhrata said. “Why would you pay $1.8 billion for something that slow? You need to do state of the art.”
Colin Parent, executive director of the transportation think tank Circulate San Diego, said he would like to see MTS pursue the trolley connection despite SANDAG’s plans.
“This is a much easier way to connect to the airport because you’re utilizing the existing system,” he said. “It’s hard to really pin down what they’re really talking about with Grand Central, but they’re talking about a whole bunch of transit lines that don’t even exist yet, so there’s no way that’s going to happen in the near term.”
MTS officials said they’re exploring the use of flexible ballot language that would allow any funding to be used for SANDAG’s vision if both tax measures are approved by voters.
“We’re working with SANDAG very closely on the airport and every other regional project,” said MTS CEO Paul Jablonski. “We’re committed to having a higher level of transit service to the airport.”
Upgrades likely to make their way into the MTS tax measure include up to $5.7 billion in improvements to trolley and bus frequencies. The improvements would be completed over the next decade, such as increasing peak-times frequency on the Blue Line from every 7.5 minutes to every 5 minutes.
If MTS decides not to pursue the Purple Line, the agency could spend more than $5 billion for the bus service upgrades, including transforming 18 popular urban routes into Rapid service.
The agency is also looking at construction of billions of dollars of transit-only freeway lanes to service buses along interstates 805 and 5, as well as state routes 52 and 56. The projects would either re-purpose highway shoulders or create moving medians that shift to widen lanes during peak times, such as is currently used on the Coronado Bridge. Some mix of the projects could be completed between 2028 and 2036.
Also being considered are transit-only lanes between the Pacific Beach shoreline at Mission Boulevard and the future Balboa Station, which will be completed by 2021 as part Mid-Coast Trolley extension from downtown to University City. The agency is also exploring running rail or a sky tram between the beach and the station.
Likely to be part of the final proposal are free transit passes for youth under 18 at a cost of about $850 million, as well about $800 million for improved rail crossings in urban areas. About $576 million is expected be set aside for beefing up security on the trolley, as well as around bus stations and major transit centers.
An idea for a $1.7 billion commuter ferry in San Diego Bay appears to be off the table at this point, although officials said they haven’t completely abandoned some version of the project.
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