Port Won’t Pay for Underground Trolley Tracks in Harbor View

The San Diego Unified Port District on Tuesday rejected a request for $16 million to put the San Diego Trolley line underground in the Harbor View-Little Italy area.

As a result, the line will most likely be placed at street level, the way residents in the area want it, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board said after the vote.

The MTDB had sought the money to resolve an acrimonious argument with residents of the Hawthorn and Grape streets neighborhood.

The residents had complained about plans to put the $89.2-million expansion of the trolley on elevated tracks, some 23 feet high. The elevated line would create a “physical and psychological barrier” to the area’s picturesque bay views and to property values, they said.

Neighbors wanted the tracks put at street level, which the MTDB said would disrupt traffic.

Both sides eventually agreed that placing part of the expansion underground and part overhead would solve the problem. But that solution called for an additional $16 million in construction costs.

The two sides sought the money from the Port District on the grounds that, according to MTDB studies, 65% of the trips on North Harbor Drive are generated by Lindbergh Field, which is owned by the Port District.

But four of the six commissioners rejected the argument.

“To add to costs just to please someone’s eye is unreasonable,” Commissioner W. Daniel Larsen said.

Board Chairman Robert Penner pointed out that the trolley line itself would not be on port property.

But Commissioner Lynn Schenk disagreed.

“The line is not on port property,” she said, “but the traffic has a disproportionate effect on our biggest asset, Lindbergh Field.”

The biggest surprise of the afternoon came from James R. Mills, chairman of the transit board. Mills said the agency will continue to seek funding for the next week, but that if it cannot get the money to go underground, it will endorse trolley lines at street level, a change from the original all-elevated plans.

“Above-grade will not happen,” Mills said.

If the MTDB cannot raise the money for the below-ground line, he said, “there will be a very adverse effect upon traffic.”

The disclosure of the MTDB’s apparent change of heart probably swayed the vote of only one commissioner, Raymond W. Burk.

“The at-grade is unacceptable,” Burk said. “The undergrounding is a necessity if this line will have the value it should to the community.”

City Councilman Ron Roberts, an executive member of the MTDB, emotionally criticized the Port District’s decision.

“The port has taken such a narrow view of their obligations,” he said, adding that the commissioners are “conducting their affairs in a negligent fashion.”

The ultimate fate of the planned alignment of the trolley route, which will run 3 1/2 miles from the Santa Fe Depot to Old Town, will be decided at next Thursday’s MTDB meeting. The trolley line is scheduled to begin operation in 1995.