San Diego Trolley Rolls on New East-West Line : Fanfare Heralds Inaugural 4.5-Mile Run; Light Rail Line Is Called ‘Shining Example’

Teeming with civic pride and a smattering of smugness, San Diego unveiled its new east-west trolley line Thursday with boasts that gave some a feeling of deja vu.

Like its five-year-old predecessor, which has ferried more than 23.9 million passengers between downtown and the Mexican border, the new 4.5-mile eastward extension was built under budget, ahead of schedule and without a nickel of federal funding.

“Nobody else is doing that,” said James R. Mills, chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board (MTDB), which operates the trolley system.

After sweating through an inaugural ceremony at the new park-and-ride station near the intersection of Euclid Avenue and Market Street, a blue-ribbon trainload of commuters including Gov. George Deukmejian and acting Mayor Ed Struiksma climbed aboard the bright red trolley for its first run downtown.

The MTDB predicts another 1 million passengers will ride the new east line before year’s end. Commuters can ride for free until Sunday, when fares ranging from 50 cents to $1 will go into effect.

Residents and workers not accustomed to seeing trolley cars move through Southeast and Logan Heights waved, cheered and held up placards as the train carrying the dignitaries made its way downtown.

“Look at that, they are absolutely gawking,” said Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer, waving back excitedly at well-wishers along the route.

The new $33.6-million line links downtown with the mostly black Southeast San Diego neighborhood. With it, say local officials, comes a promise of revitalization similar to that brought to downtown by the 15.9-mile north-south line when it began operating in 1981.

“This trolley has the ability to be the catalyst for new economic growth,” said Councilman William Jones, who represents the Southeast area.

Deukmejian, who rode the trolley to the downtown Civic Center en route to a campaign speech in Mission Bay, never mentioned troubles with Los Angeles’ stalled rail transit plans in his keynote speech opening the trolley line.

But the governor said San Diego’s “success story” should be “a shining example” for other cities. It “stands as a symbol of a county, a city and a community that is truly on the move,” Deukmejian said.

“San Diego has proven once again it is a can-do community,” the governor added.

Mills was more direct in his comparison of San Diego’s no-frills trolley system with the ambitious 18-mile, $3.3-billion Metro Rail proposal in Los Angeles.

Metro Rail, still in its planning stages, has already cost $250 million--much more than the $116.6 million San Diego transit officials have spent so far on the north-south line and the new east-west line.

“I wanted to get Los Angeles to do something like this--build a modest project just to get things under way,” said Mills, a former Democratic state senator, who led the civic chest-thumping.

Financed with a combination of gasoline tax revenues and a lease-back arrangement involving its 30 German-built light rail cars, the San Diego Trolley “is the most efficient system in the U.S.,” Mills boasted.

The fares, ranging from 50 cents to $1.50, will cover 90% of the system’s 1986 operating costs, “far better than any other system in the U.S,” Mills predicted.

Already, the San Diego Trolley is recovering far more of its operating costs with fares than any of the 18 other U.S. rail transit systems and is well above average even for bus-only urban transit systems, said John Neff of the American Public Transit Assn. And, its construction costs have also been very low compared with systems in other cities, Neff said by telephone from his office in Washington, D.C.

From its beginning, the San Diego Trolley has been touted by state and national officials as a success story.

At $86 million--about $5.3 million a mile--the first leg of the system was installed in 1981 at just over a tenth of the cost of similar above-ground light rail systems around the country.

“You really can’t compare that with heavy rail subways,” Neff said, “but they (San Diego’s MTDB) do have a reputation for doing a very good job.”

The most recent estimates for the first four miles of Los Angeles’ ambitious Metro Rail project estimates its costs at $1.2 billion.

The planned 18-mile system--all underground--would connect downtown Los Angeles to North Hollywood, passing through the heavily congested Wilshire corridor.

The San Diego system has been able to hold down costs by keeping its system above ground and building on existing rail right-of-way, much of it with tracks already in place.

A key to the success, Mills admitted, was MTDB’s 1979 purchase of the San Diego and Arizona Railway Co. for $18.1 million. Mills said the purchase of the railroad, which parent company Southern Pacific had wanted to abandon years earlier, gave transit planners more than 100 miles of right-of-way at rock-bottom prices.

Beginning with an 11.3-mile extension of the the new east line to El Cajon--targeted to begin operation in 1989--transit officials envision a 115-mile rail system covering most of the county. Eventually, they say, that system would include seven spurs, stretching north to Oceanside and Escondido, south to San Ysidro, east to El Cajon and Santee, and with an expanded central city network to tie in the airport, harbor, Old Town and Mission Valley areas.

The new east line trolleys will run every 15 minutes during rush hours and every 30 minutes the rest of the day. With a winding, curvy route, the trolley cars never got up to their maximum speed of 50 m.p.h. Thursday.

Although a handful of Tijuana-bound commuters caught the Euclid line by accident Thursday morning and had to transfer at the Imperial-12th Street station, it was a mostly error-free inaugural for the new trolley.

But the outdoor ceremony at the Euclid park-and-ride station had its share of gaffes.

Channel 10’s noisy helicopter flew over just as Deukmejian was starting to speak. An arch of red helium-filled balloons that framed the train behind the speaker’s podium was repeatedly blown by wind onto the heads of embarrassed dignitaries. And, the singer who led the National Anthem muffed the lyrics, ending an otherwise stirring rendition: “O’er the land over the sea and the home of the brave.”