A Fight for the Future of San Diego

When you ask the people of San Diego what they want in a transportation system, the answer is usually balance. In a 2009 survey [PDF] by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California, 75 percent of San Diego residents thought the region should complement its existing highway system by expanding the transit network and implementing programs like congestion pricing. The feeling is more than an abstraction: In 1987 San Diego voters approved a half cent sales tax to finance long-term transportation improvements, with a third of that money dedicated to transit, and when the tax came up for extension in 2004, two-thirds of voters agreed to support it for another 40 years [PDF].

In late October, metro San Diego leaders adopted a long-term transportation plan that seemed to reflect this balanced mission. The 2050 Regional Transportation Plan is the result of years of effort by the San Diego Association of Governments, or SANDAG, a coalition of local leaders entrusted with crafting the region's transport policies. SANDAG's ambitious, $214 billion plan boasted an "integrated, multimodal transportation system by mid-century." About a third of the plan's funding in its first decade will go toward transit projects, with that share rising to 57 percent in the final 10 years of the plan. To some the plan felt too focused on mass transit at the expense of highways, including the editors of the North County Times of San Diego, who "disagreed heartily" with it on those grounds.