Trolley May Be Sliding Into Stadium’s 2nd Level Sometime in Late 1996

Sports fans will be riding trolleys along an elevated railway to get to San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium if a plan embraced this week by the stadium’s governing board becomes reality.

The plan, which was unanimously approved at the board’s meeting Thursday, is expected to be in use by late 1996 and is part of a 5.7-mile San Diego Trolley expansion from Old Town to a station near the junction of Interstate 15 and Interstate 8.

“We approved an alignment which would cause the trolley to have a station and a ticket booth on the second level of the stadium, so you can take the trolley from anywhere in the system and exit directly into the stadium,” said Lee Stein, a member of the stadium’s board of directors.

The plan for the elevated tracks, which has already been approved by the Metropolitan Transit Development Board, which runs the trolley system, would cost $11 million more than an alternate proposal that would place the tracks at ground level.

“That plan would have taken up a few thousand parking spaces and interfered with the (traffic) circulation,” Stein said.

The elevated tracks would take up as few as 70 of the 18,500 parking spaces, Stein said.

Trolleys to the stadium would run every 7 1/2 minutes, with as many as four additional trolleys during stadium events, Stein said.

The $45-million segment of line running through the stadium is part of a $190-million expansion, which must now undergo an environmental impact study expected to be completed by January, MTDB officials said.

Construction of the new line, which is expected to serve as many as 4,000 passengers per stadium event, would begin in early 1994.

The stadium has not had a history of particularly heavy traffic, however, even after sporting events, Stein said.

Last Saturday night, when 54,517 fans attended the Padres game, the fourth-largest attendance in the club’s history, it took only 45 minutes for the parking lot to empty, Stein said. Officials at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles said it would take at least an hour for a similar crowd to leave that stadium.

“Transportation is a critical element, and we just want to be sure that we have the best possible transit system,” Stein said.

Funding for the project comes from a combination of a 1987 voter-approved transportation tax and state grants.