AT ONE-THIRD THE COST, FLEX-TROLLEY
CITY'S LATEST MASS-TRANSIT LURE
By ANDREW DONOHUE
October 11, 2002

It's a bus.

It's a train.

No, it's the flex-trolley -- the vehicle that San Diego City Councilman Byron Wear believes is the future of public transit in San Diego County.

Local politicians and transportation officials gather to see the San Diego debut of the flex-trolley at the Imperial/12th Trolley Station Staff photo by Andrew Donohue

Running on rubber tires but designed to look like a modern, aerodynamic train, the flex-trolley runs on its own dedicated track or rolls through city streets. And a flex-trolley system in San Diego would cost one-third less than a light-rail system while taking about one-third of the time to implement, Wear said.

Within the next three years, he said 15 to 20 of these vehicles will be cruising through San Diego as part of a comprehensive regional plan to shape the county's growth by controlling land use and traffic congestion.

Wear and a handful of city and county officials unveiled a prototype Friday of the flex-trolley, the latest carrot dangled to entice San Diegans out of their cars and onto mass transit.

"In the last few years, the San Diego region has shown we can do a much better job of integrating land use and transportation," said Wear, who also sits on the Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB). "Providing a greater emphasis on public transit to solve traffic congestion is critical to that effort."

The San Diego area has the eighth worse traffic congestion in the nation, according to the Texas Traffic Institute at Texas A&M University. The bus rapid transit is part of a three-pronged mass transit plan that -- along with traditional buses and trolleys already in use -- regional officials hope will lighten freeway loads as an estimated half a million cars are added to the area over the next two decades.

Renovating existing freeways, adding high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes and encouraging "smart growth" plans such as the City of Villages are also part of this effort.

Officials hope to provide the trolleys with dedicated right-of-way lanes that could run along the freeway system and traffic signal priority on city streets to allow the lines to operate with the efficiency of a rail system.

A showcase route is planned to run from the San Diego State University campus along El Cajon Boulevard to Park Boulevard downtown in about three years. Additional lines running in the La Jolla and Sorrento Valley area, from Old Town to the beach area, and along H Street to Chula Vista are in the works.

The vehicles cost about $1 million a piece, though Wear said that because the city is buying in bulk with Los Angeles, he hopes the price will be lower. He said a deal to purchase the vehicles should be done within the next 60 to 90 days.

Wear said he wants to use $60 million from the county's TransNet program to finance the SDSU-to-downtown line and the planning for the other three proposed lines.

The TransNet program began in 1987 when voters approved a half-cent sales tax increase to finance transportation projects, and the San Diego Association of Governments decides how the money is spent.

The future of the flex-trolley project is ultimately tied to TransNet, which expires in 2008, but voters will likely have a chance to extend the program for 30 more years in 2004.

Still, San Diegans love their cars. Can this affair be tamed?

"I am not naive enough to think that we are going to convince people to give up their cars to ride mass transit just because we tell them it's good for the region," said Mayor Dick Murphy. "We've got to make it a more attractive alternative or they will not get out of their cars."

The key to making public transit more attractive is to make it cheaper, faster, more convenient and more reliable -- all touts of the flex-trolley, he said. Supporters also trumpeted the flex-trolley's global positioning system, which will notify would-be riders when the next trolley will arrive.

Garry Bonelli, San Diego Association of Governments spokesman, said the drive-time commute from Escondido to Kearny Mesa takes about 40 minutes, door-to-door. But using public transportation, this trip takes more than 2 hours.

It is this kind of trip that officials hope to eventually trim down through projects such as the flex-trolley.

But these are long-term solutions. Murphy said an Interstate 15 transit route should be completed by 2007. Sandag goals have the Escondido to Kearny Mesa trip via mass transit pared down to 50 minutes -- by 2030.

Many believe the key to long-term transportation is the creation of one agency to handle the transportation planning of the entire county. This became a reality last month when Gov. Gray Davis signed legislation that combined Sandag and functions of the North County Transit District and the MTDB.

San Diego could be one of the first regions in the nation to use the bus rapid transit system if it goes forward as planned. The system has been in use in some parts of France for about three years. Las Vegas will become the first U.S. city to use the system when they roll out a similar program in the next year.