By Hata Velic
News Editor
According to the San Diego region’s primary public planning, transportation, transit construction and research agency SANDAG, major Mid-Coast Trolley construction is expected to start during the second half of 2016 to connect the Santa Fe Depot, Downtown to University City (sandag.org).
San Diego traffic can get extremely congested, and will only get worse if the population along the Mid-Coast Corridor increases by 19 percent, as predicted. These trolley lines are meant to alleviate this congestion, according to SANDAG. The trolley construction will help expand the capacity of transportation and is designed to free up extra freeways and roadways for people traveling by car (sandag.org).
This construction will also create jobs, as the trolley construction company’s employment is expected increase by 12 percent, according to SANDAG (sandag.org).
Although both University City and University of California, San Diego (UCSD) are some of San Diego’s largest trip generators, neither of them are served directly by regional transit. According to the UCSD website, this project will help serve centers like Old Town, UCSD, Westfield UTC, Scripps Memorial Hospital and surrounding areas. It will provide more travel options for people going to work, school and medical centers (ucsd.edu).
SANDAG has been working to develop designs for each trolley station that is part of this project. The project will connect corridor residents with other trolley lines from Mission Valley, East County and South County. The Mid-Coast Trolley (the section between Downtown and University City) received its “final environmental clearance” from SANDAG Board of Directors and the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) in the fall of 2014. The FTA approved the project’s entry into final engineering in April 2015, and SANDAG is now working to get a full funding grant agreement from the FTA’s New Starts program (sandag.org).
According to UCSD representatives, the full funding agreement would help cover 50 percent of the project’s funding (ucsd.edu). The other 50 percent will be provided by TransNet, which is San Diego’s half-cent sales tax for transportation improvements (sandag.org).
According to the UCSD website, “Nine new Trolley stations will be built as part of the project with locations at: Tecolote Road, Clairemont Drive, Balboa Avenue, Nobel Drive, VA Medical Center, Pepper Canyon (UCSD west campus), Voigt Drive (UCSD east campus), Executive Drive and the Westfield UTC transit center (the Trolley’s terminus station)” (ucsd.edu).
According to SANDAG, including financing, the total cost of this project is currently projected to be approximately two billion dollars. The trolley service is expected to begin in 2021 after the construction is completed (sandag.org).
Sophomore Brian Lim said, “I walk to school, and I believe that if I were able to take the trolley instead, it would be a lot more convenient. However, there is always a lot of traffic in the morning, and if they construct a trolley, the traffic might move to the trolley station.”