Port Will Consider Paying for Part of Airport Trolley Line

Commissioners of the San Diego Unified Port District unanimously agreed Tuesday to consider paying for a portion of the proposed San Diego Trolley’s Bayside line, which would link the convention center at Navy Field with Lindbergh Field.

Without funding from the Port District, City Councilman and Metropolitan Transit Development Board Chairman Dick Murphy told the commissioners, the Bayside extension likely could not be built in this decade, and would not be operating when the convention center opens.

“It doesn’t appear that MTDB can get state or federal money to build this anytime during the 1980s, so we have to look at other, local sources,” Murphy said.

Murphy has proposed that the Port District contribute about $10 million--half of the construction cost of the segment of the Bayside line running between 13th and Commercial streets, where the south and east trolley lines will meet, and the intersection at Broadway and Harbor Drive. The entire segment lies on Port District land.

City of San Diego transient occupancy tax funds would supply the rest of the money for initial construction on the Bayside line, Murphy said. The total cost of the Bayside extension is estimated at $40 million to $60 million.

Commissioner Bill Rick, chairman of the board, this week will name a committee to study Murphy’s proposal. Outgoing Commissioner Maureen O’Connor, who will not be reappointed to her seat by the City Council, made a determined bid to be named to that committee as a private citizen, saying flatly that the Port District’s staff does not have the expertise to analyze transportation issues. (The City Council has for six weeks been deadlocked over the choice of O’Connor’s successor, and O’Connor will continue on the board until a new commissioner is named.)

O’Connor, who narrowly lost to Roger Hedgecock in the 1983 mayoral election, has been prominently mentioned among possible mayoral candidates should Hedgecock be convicted in his perjury and conspiracy trial and forced to resign.

Selection to the committee, which will recommend whether the port will financially support the Bayside line, would give her a prominent role in planning for the trolley and convention center even after she is off the Port District commission.

“The staff (members) are not experts in transportation; they’ll need help,” O’Connor said. “I understand transit (O’Connor once served as chairman of MTDB). I’d be happy to volunteer and assist in any way possible. We could have an answer within a month--I guarantee it.”

O’Connor expressed support for Murphy’s proposal. “It definitely has merit,” she said. “And now is the time to do it. They (MTDB) need our cooperation, and we need the trolley system’s opening to coincide with the convention center’s if we are to solve our traffic circulation problems downtown.”

The convention center is scheduled to open in late 1987.

Port Commissioner Louis Wolfsheimer said he was “impressed with Murphy’s presentation. It offers a glimmer of hope that we might be able to get people from South Bay and East County to these employment centers,” the convention center and adjacent new hotels.

Murphy said the port would benefit greatly from the Bayside trolley line, so it should share the cost. “This segment runs entirely on port property and serves port developments,” Murphy said.

“It is an answer to concerns about traffic congestion, parking limitations, access to the new employment centers and a way for tourists to get around downtown.”