San Diego, a photo essay

[tags]san diego, san diego trolley, mts, megabus[/tags]

Broadway, looking east from Santa Fe Depot, downtown San Diego

This is an addition to Tuesday’s trip to San Diego, courtesy of Megabus. The voyage was brief in time — only a little more than three hours between the bus arrival and train departure to L.A. — but covered a fair chunk of San Diego. These photos are peppered with some explanations and insights.

Come along for the ride. Try to come via Megabus, especially now that it has moved its stop to downtown San Diego. It is a fabulous bus service. And please forgive the rotgut quality of the photos taken by camera phone.

When Megabus was letting people off at the Goodall’s bus yard in a remote pocket of City Heights, this was the only bus to civilization. Using local transit, it would take about 40 minutes on a roundabout trip to downtown, even though a car or taxicab could get on SR-94 and drive a mile there.

This is the intersection of Gateway Drive and Home Avenue, looking southwest. Cutaway van #214, runs on Metropolitan Transit System Line 965. It’s a one-way loop through City Heights.

The neighborhood is very interesting. Peter McFerrin could write a term paper on it. City Heights is a land that zoning forgot. Goodall’s maintains a bus yard — an industrial land use – in a residential neighborhood. The walk up Home Avenue has patches of undeveloped land, a recycling center, a large apartment complex, a strip mall and free-standing restaurants. The residential portions of City Heights are hilly and are lined with the bungalow homes that are found in Northeast L.A.

The bus only draws 6 people in this neighborhood. A major point of interest on this line is the cluster of civic buildings near the beginning of the loop. But the line seems designed to get people to this place:

The City Heights Transit Plaza.

This is University Avenue at SR-15. It’s quite an impressive dress-up for an ordinary bus stop. There are two of these, one on each side of the street. Besides “City Heights” in large letters above the canopy, this transit plaza has restrooms, water fountains and a booth that was not open but possibly used for transit information.

Line 965 connects with lines 7, 10, 210 and 960. The latter two are peak-hour commuter buses. Line 7 is San Diego’s busiest bus line. Line 10 was a new addition to the system after last year’s major bus restructuring. It may also be a prototype for bus rapid transit in San Diego. Line 10 operates as a limited-stop bus along University Avenue, while 7 does the grunt work as the local. Then, at Hillcrest, it becomes a local for the remainder of the route to Old Town.

This is an exterior and interior shot of bus 426, a New Flyer C40LF, that was on the Line 10 trip that had arrived at the bus plaza at 2:59 p.m. and made it to Old Town Transit Center about 40 minutes later.

This was one of the newest buses in San Diego Transit’s fleet. San Diego recycles numbers for its buses, so many higher-number buses are actually older than this unit. This bus bares San Diego’s new red-and-white MTS motif, and the interior is now red and gray instead of the loud red-and-blue seats. Also, the driver changed the headsign to “SD Transit” before it could capture how the new destination signs are listed. The new headsigns read like Wikipedia entries. Destinations offer two rows: the top row being the terminal, and the bottom row broken down into two subcolumns. One column had what streets the bus serves, the other saying ”limited.” 

San Diegans took to the limited-stop buses quickly. This trip maintained almost a full sitting load from City Heights on west. At the limited stops, the bus was picking up about 10 people per stop. Most were riding and alighting along the local portion along Washington Street.

This is a small view of Old Town Transit Center — the convenience store, to be exact. Old Town is one of the county’s most important transit centers. This multimodal monument, near a site rich in local history, has connections between several local and express bus lines, two Trolley lines, and Coaster commuter rail. It is a gateway station, with transit service to the north coast, Mission Valley, western San Diego and its military installations and downtown and all points south.

It’s also San Diego’s equivalent of Crackton. No, not because Old Town is particularly unsavory, but because it’s an elaborate forced-transfer center similar to Pico-Rimpau, aka Vineyard Junction, aka Crackton. Read The Militant Angeleno’s historical write-up of Crack… err, Vineyard Junction, as he channels Huell Howser.

Before 2005, Blue Line trains would continue to Mission San Diego station. In 2005, the extension to San Diego State University and Grossmont opened and Trolley received its shipment of Siemens Avanto cars (3000 series). The new low floor cars are fine for newer segments of the Trolley, but cannot run on the remainder of the Blue and Orange lines. So riders are forced to transfer at Old Town.

Also seen in Old Town:

One Coaster train departs south for San Diego, traveling at … wait, this isn’t an algebra lesson. Two Coaster trains, going in either direction, wait at Old Town for transfer connections. They would stay here for about 10 minutes.

San Diego does things differently than L.A., and most of them in a good way. Yet here’s something the two cities share in common: ticket vending machines. L.A. riders should be familiar with these machines by now. San Diego also has these, built by hometown company Cubic. San Diego’s version of TAP is called Compass, and the Trolley stations have the same waist-high pylons that are installed in L.A. stations but see no use.

This is the Avanto car on the Green Line that is the culprit behind the forced transfers. Behind it is an older 2000-series high-floor car.

This is the “cockpit” of the Avanto car. By the way, to experience what it’s like driving one of these things, Trolley is hiring train operators. Trolley is rare in that it’s a separate agency and does not require bus driving experience to be a train operator! For most agencies, train operators are high seniority positions.

The Green Line is packed during rush hour.

The western transfer point between the Green and Orange Lines is Grossmont. There’s a shopping center nearby, and there is some development going on at the station. The bus bays have been fenced off.

This is an Orange Line train heading to downtown.

L.A. is from Mars and San Diego is from Venus. L.A. riders can buy Pepsi, but not enjoy them on trains or in stations. San Diegans are Coca-Cola people. And they are allowed to drink on platforms and trains, as long as the containers can be sealed. There is no eating or smoking, though.

Scenes from an Orange Line train. This trip did not get full during rush hour. And the Orange Line has never been a productive service in the San Diego system. It serves the eastern suburbs (El Cajon, Lemon Grove, La Mesa) and southeast San Diego.

The older Trolley cars (1000 and 2000) have facing seats. This brings up a unique etiquette issue for San Diego. Convention etiquette on transit dictates that riders should not make prolonged eye contact or unnecessarily bother other passengers. The facing seats result in an exception. San Diego’s rider etiquette is to say hello to the persons sitting in your area, and expect to engage in spontaneous conversation.

A very common sight in downtown is San Diego’s (un)official city bird: the crane. Construction, not whooping. The latter can be found at the zoo.  The former, though, is transforming the center city with new housing and retail units. San Diego got into transit-oriented development early on, and it has done fabulous work developing living and recreational space around the Trolley.

This is America Plaza. This is the northwest transfer point between Blue and Orange Line trains. Above it is a structure built around the Trolley. This is a minor landmark, and was an early example of integrating architecture around transportation. This concept can also be seen at the MTS headquarters, built around the 12th & Imperial Station, and now the City College station with a development known as the Smart Corner.

Another study in contrasts between San Diego and Los Angeles: our train stations. Our Union Station is sprawling, cavernous and monumental. San Diego’s historic Santa Fe Depot is architecturally elegant, but more compact and more reflective of human scale.

San Diego has a cafe counter, a terminal for a new Mexican airline (see below) and a kiosk showing the history of this station.

San Diego has pedicabs, too. This waiting area is outside of the Santa Fe Depot. Los Angeles has a small one-man operation. San Diego’s has been around much longer, and is well established enough to sell advertising on the outside of the passenger carriages.

The Manchester Grand Hyatt has been one of San Diego’s most prominent high-rise hotels since it opened 15 years ago. The Skyscraper Page has statistical details, and good renderings by Christopher Bollinger, of the MGH.

Volaris is the Mexican carrier mentioned above. This modified Gillig Phantom ferries passengers down Mexico way to the Tijuana airport for $15. At Tijuana, passengers can then fly to major cities through Mexico on the “South of the Border Southwest”.

And finally, a view of the busy Amtrak Pacific Surfliner train. This is one of the busiest and most successful services of the Amtrak network, though it is a state effort. It shares tracks with Metrolink and Coaster, making this a busy commuter corridor as well.

The Alstom-built double-decker cars are very comfortable and spacious. The cars are worn from age and heavy use, but offer a smooth and relaxing ride with beautiful views of the Pacific in south Orange and north San Diego counties.

And that’s a productive use of a half day. Thanks for coming along on the ride.