Criticism Unleashed Against Proposed Golden Triangle Trolley Routes : Transportation: Councilwoman sides with residents who oppose running tracks along Regents Road.

Calling it “a sexy way to move people around,” San Diego City Councilwoman Abbe Wolfsheimer told community leaders in La Jolla on Wednesday that a trolley line through the Golden Triangle and University City is “absolutely mandatory” despite mounting opposition.

But Wolfsheimer surprised, and pleased, some of the trolley’s more vocal opponents by saying--for the first time--that she opposes a proposed route running up Regents Road that has galvanized community opposition.

“Initially, I looked at Regents Road as the appropriate place to put the line,” Wolfsheimer said. “But now, it’s highly developed. Is it still a good place? I don’t know . . . . But in my own mind, I don’t favor Regents Road.”

The controversy surrounding the proposed mid-coast corridor concerns an alignment on or along Regents Road, Genesee Avenue or Interstate 5. This so-called center segment of the trolley’s North Line would ultimately connect Old Town with Del Mar Heights Road.

Residents in the gated community of La Jolla Colony, with homes valued at upward of $400,000, remain furious with the Metropolitan Transit Development Board for even thinking of putting tracks in Rose Canyon, within 150 feet of their back yards.

“Abbe talks about the trolley being sexy, but it’s 320 feet long and has four cars. It’s not some cute little train--it’s mass transit,” said Russ Craig, a La Jolla Colony resident and president of the Save Rose Canyon Committee.

Craig and others have formed a coalition of property owners, residents and area merchants, most of whom favor an alignment running parallel and to the west of I-5. Most are adamantly opposed to the Regents Road alignment, which would mean the condemnation of homes.

“Save Rose Canyon!!!” reads a flyer distributed recently in the area. “Don’t let light rail lines slice into the heart of La Jolla Colony.”

Leonard McRoskey, who, with his brother Jack hopes to build a 208-unit residential complex at Nobel Drive and Regents Road in University City, says that, if the mid-coast corridor runs on Regents Road and not I-5, it will “cripple the neighborhood.”

Jack McRoskey said the MTDB favors putting in a “master” station at Nobel and Regents because the city has agreed to give it a tract of land at that intersection. He said the station would include a bus terminal with 14 “bays” and would require additional parking.

Jack McRoskey said Regents Road is the main entrance to the new Doyle Park, which he claims would be compromised by the project. Immediately south of that, he said, is a 1,000-student grammar school (Doyle Elementary) that empties onto Regents Road.

Despite Wolfsheimer’s comments to the contrary, and a tendency Wednesday to underplay controversy, MTDB Chairman and former state Sen. James R. Mills adamantly opposes placing trolley tracks parallel to I-5--which almost everyone else seems to favor.

Mills could not be reached for comment Wednesday, but in September, in an interview with The Times, he angrily characterized the growing neighborhood discontent as “hysteria bordering on paranoia.”

Mills recently found himself pitted against Harbor View and Little Italy residents who opposed elevating trolley tracks through their neighborhoods on the route that will run from the Santa Fe Depot to Old Town.

A compromise on that alignment was worked out only recently, with the City Council and the San Diego Unified Port District agreeing to help fund an over-and-under alignment that will place tracks underground at Grape and Hawthorn streets and elevate them at Laurel Street.

In September, Mills characterized trolley opponents as NIMBYs (for “not in my back yard”) and said, “The NIMBYs came in and said we shouldn’t even study the Regents Road route, even though federal regulations require we look at all alternatives.

“They claim there would be severe environmental effects to go through Rose Canyon, although two tracks are there now (used by passenger and freight trains). We would just build two more” along the existing Santa Fe right of way, he said.

But residents in La Jolla Colony say the comparison with freight and passenger trains is, as Russ Craig puts it, highly misleading.

“Amtrak is a very different animal from something that would go by every five minutes,” Craig said. “With the trolley, there would be fencing on both sides of it, noise, visual blight, environmental concerns, safety concerns . . . .

“And running it up either Regents or Genesee would greatly compromise Rose Canyon, which has a lot of wildlife, bike paths . . . . And it’s an area for joggers. We’re not opposed to the trolley--we’re totally for the trolley--we just want to see it up I-5.”

Although final cost projections are years away, MTDB representative William Lieberman said Wednesday that the I-5 route would undoubtedly cost more. He said an environmental impact report is just now being prepared for a line that won’t be complete until 1998 at the earliest.

Mills said in September that a prohibitively expensive North Line--which might be incurred by running the line parallel to I-5--could endanger federal funds earmarked for the project. He said the MTDB was able to choose only one line in its entire system for receiving federal funds and that North Line was chosen for its potential to serve the largest number of riders.

“That whole line depends on federal involvement,” Mills said. “If the feds don’t come through, I’m afraid we don’t have a line. It’s really that simple.”

But Lieberman and Wolfsheimer floated the idea at Wednesday’s meeting of a route running parallel to I-5 with an east-west “spur” serving UC San Diego--whose administrators favor the I-5 route--the commercial Golden Triangle and shopping areas near University Towne Centre.