By Dave Schwab

MTS breaks ground on Mid-Coast Blue Line

The Mid-Coast project extending San Diego Trolley service from Old Town to UC San Diego and University City adding nine new stations, including two at the university, was inaugurated with bands, food and vendor booths — even a giant earth mover —at a formal ceremony Oct. 22.

Several thousand people attended the Mid-Coast Trolley groundbreaking and community celebration on the field at The Preuss School UCSD near the future Voigt Drive Trolley station.

Attendees enjoyed a free community picnic on the grass while learning about upcoming trolley construction expected to start soon with service debuting in 2021.

The $2.1-billion Mid-Coast Trolley project will extend the existing Blue Line by 11 miles north of Old Town, adding nine new stations serving Mission Bay Park, Pacific Beach and Mission Beach, the VA Medical Center, UC San Diego, business clusters along Genesee Avenue, and the Westfield UTC mall. Once the extension is built, transit riders will enjoy a one-seat ride (no transfers) from San Ysidro to University City.

“Today is a historic day for San Diego transit,” said SANDAG chair and San Diego County Board of Supervisors chair Ron Roberts. “This is the largest transit project that we’ve ever had in San Diego.”

Planners estimate the Mid-Coast project will attract more than 20,000 new trolley trips every weekday north of Old Town.

“Mid-Coast trolley is a huge undertaking going right through the heart of some of our busiest communities,” noted architect Roberts, who added the trolley ‘s 11 new miles of track include four miles of bridges, which he promised will be of superior design and beauty.

Roberts told of a female constituent’s unanticipated claim of how positive Mid-Coast’s extension will be for families.

“She said, because she lived in Chula Vista and had to commute to her office daily, that she never got home in time to have dinner with her family,” Roberts said adding the woman then told him, ‘This will keep my husband from divorcing me.’”

Other dignitaries participating in the event included Congressman Scott Peters and Congresswoman Susan Davis, UC San Diego Vice Chancellor Gary Matthews, Federal Transit Administration Region 9 Deputy Regional Administrator Edward Carranza Jr., and Metropolitan Transit System Chair Harry Mathis.

Congressman Peters noted San Diego is “very good at providing matching money to get federal and state dollars,” noting the Mid-Coast project is “a great and long labor of love.”

“We’re going to have something really to be proud of, and it’s going to be a regional treasure for us,” Peters added.

Congresswoman Susan Davis, addressing the crowd, said “we couldn’t have done it without you.” She especially thanked “people who put their hearts and souls into this for a very long time.”

Federal administrator Carranza Jr. noted linking UC San Diego with the trolley system is “a very monumental and great milestone.”

“This project has been evolving for several decades,” Carranza added. “We’re on to getting it done.”

Former City Councilman and longtime regional planner Harry Mathis quipped, “We foresaw the advent of the trolley — it only took 30 years.”

Mathis talked of riding streetcars in San Diego as a kid noting he still enjoys taking rides on the trolley with his grandchildren. “This is a great day for San Diego,” Mathis said. “We’re very proud to be a part of it.”

Rose Colangelo, a nurse at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla, and Franklin Hang, Preuss School senior class president, also spoke at the event about what the trolley extension meant to them, and how it will help improve their quality of life.

“I know I speak for the entire medical community when I say that the extended trolley service from Old Town will bring an important and welcome convenience for physicians, staff, our patients and their families and visitors,” Colangelo said.

Hang noted Preuss is a special school because it serves students from economically disadvantaged families whose children have never gone on to higher education.

“Students come here from as far away as City Heights, Spring Valley and Barrio Logan waking up pretty early to attend school,” said Hang, pointing out “the only viable mode of travel for many of us, without our parents taking time out of their daily schedules, is through this means (public transportation).”

Project construction is expected to produce more than 14,000 local jobs. Even after construction is over, the Mid-Coast Trolley will have an estimated $116 million annual economic impact on the region by taking cars off the road, reducing parking needs, and increasing access to jobs. The Mid-Coast corridor supports more than 325,000 jobs. The two ends of the route – Downtown San Diego and University City – account for nearly half of that total.

Pre-construction activities to clear the way for the project – primarily the relocation of underground and overhead utilities – started in early 2016.

The Oct. 22 groundbreaking celebration was made possible by Presenting Sponsor Mid-Coast Transit Constructors (which is the project contractor, a joint venture of Stacy & Witbeck, Inc., Skanska USA, and Herzog Contracting Corporation), Premiere Sponsor UC San Diego, and other sponsors, including: PGH Wong Engineering Inc., Parsons Brinckerhoff, HDR, T.Y.LIN International, Jacobs Engineering, SDG&E, and Modern Railway Systems.

Mid-Coast dedication ceremonies concluded with public officials lining up for a group photo in front of a towering earthmover.

Siemens, which has been providing light rail vehicles (LRVs) for the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) since 1981, recently received an order for 45 new S70 LRVs from MTS. That brings the total number of vehicles supplied by Siemens to MTS to 244.The new vehicles will allow service enhancements on existing rail lines and provide the necessary LRVs to operate the 11-mile extension of the UC San Diego Blue Line now under construction.

The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) is the San Diego region’s primary public planning, transportation and research agency providing the public forum for regional policy decisions about growth, transportation planning and construction, environmental management, housing, open space, energy, public safety, and binational topics. SANDAG is governed by a Board of Directors composed of mayors, council members, and supervisors from each of the region’s 18 cities and the county government.

—Dave Schwab can be reached at [email protected].