San Diego

A deeply divided San Diego City Council on Monday delayed for one month a proposal to close two blocks of C Street to automobiles. The Metropolitan Transit Development Board and the city planning staff had made the proposal so that it could build wider platforms for its prospering San Diego Trolley. Wheelchair-bound trolley riders favored it--and told the council so Monday--because the new stations, at C between 2nd and 3rd avenues (the Civic Center) and at 5th and 6th avenues (for the Gaslamp Quarter) would let them get on and off in the center of downtown San Diego instead of at stops at the beginning and end of the trolley line where the wide platforms are now. C Street was to have been closed to automobile traffic at those widened stations. But the proposal was opposed by the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, San Diegans Inc. and the Centre City Development Corp., which urged the council not to ban cars from an important cross-town street. On Monday, CCDC offered an alternate proposal that would have allowed wider platforms along the trolley line without closing any sections of C Street to traffic. The council, by a 5-3 vote, rejected a partial closing of C Street, then decided to reconsider the issue on March 25.