Environment Report: San Diegans Say, If The Bus Were Faster, I'd Ride It.

By MacKenzie Elmer, the Voice of San Diego

December 12, 2022

A few Friday evenings ago and running late, I quickly weighed whether I should drive or take the bus downtown. Google Maps showed the bus line outside my apartment could get me there in 45 minutes, compared to a 25-minute drive.

I drove and spent over 30 minutes in stop-and-go traffic on the 163 and another 15 minutes looking for a parking spot within six blocks of the bar. I reluctantly chose a private lot operated by a third-party company that charged $25 per hour.

Now, not only was I late, I spent more than $50 in parking plus my own gas just to be there.

That trip, had I chosen the bus, would have cost me $5 and taken about the same amount of time to reach my destination.

An impromptu poll of my Twitter followers revealed many San Diegans weigh similar pros and cons about bus transit. I asked: What would it take to get you to ride a bus on the regular?

Forty-six percent of the 100 responses said: faster buses.

Another 30 percent or so said either more bus routes or stops, in other words, options to reach more destinations. Another 5 percent actually said fewer bus stops, meaning the route nearest them takes too long.

This small, unscientific Twitter poll is consistent with years of transportation research showing transit riders value frequency and speed. The Metropolitan Transit System found the same was true among San Diegans in a 2016 rider survey, as did TransitCenter, an advocacy group, in a nationwide survey in 2019. Circulate San Diego, a housing and transit advocacy organization, made the insight the basis of a report last year advocating for regional planners to prioritize faster and more frequent bus service.

Riding the bus typically takes longer than driving a car in San Diego. As long as that is true, those for whom driving a car is an option will choose to do so.

Jesse O’Sullivan, policy counsel at Circulate San Diego, said making buses run more frequently takes coordination between multiple bureaucracies, namely, the San Diego Association of Governments (which manages regional transportation planning and holds a lot of the state and federal dollars for big projects), the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (which runs bus and trolley service in most of the county), and each city’s local council governments.

“The biggest overall message is, making the bus go faster is the best way to make transit better,” O’Sullivan said. “Some of the other long-term (transit) plans take up all the airspace … the question is what can we do now with the money we have now.”

A dedicated bus lane can speed-up transit times by 25 percent, according to Circulate’s “Fast Bus!” report. Unlike other transit improvements, the capital costs of creating one are small: all you gotta do is paint one, like the two-and-a-half mile stretch of bus-only lanes on El Cajon Boulevard. That cost $100,000. Technically it’s a pilot project and didn’t involve tearing-up streets and replacing other infrastructure like stormwater pipes or speed bumps. For context, SANDAG built 14 miles of bikeways from its regional goal of 77 miles, at a cost of about $13.2 million per mile, according to reporting by the Union-Tribune.

It doesn’t have to be that expensive, O’Sullivan said, but transit projects often trigger years of gathering public feedback and negotiations with local governments that have shelves full of other street projects and priorities which get tacked onto bike or bus lane endeavors.

Listening to what transit riders want carries climate benefits, too.

Vehicles are the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in San Diego, responsible for more than half of locally-generated emissions. Buses are circulating through their routes every day anyway. Opting for the car adds one more pound of more planet-warming carbon dioxide per mile driven. The more butts in the bus, the fewer emissions generated per rider and the fewer vehicles vying for space, slowing down travel time and speeding-up the burning of fossil fuels.

Elsewhere in the Ecosystem

• In other bus news, MTS ridership is at its highest since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. (Union-Tribune)
• ICYMI, I talked with Imperial Valley farmers about their astronomically low cost of drought-stricken Colorado River water supply and why some of them want to pay more. Bonus beautiful photos by our photographer, Ariana Drehsler.
• The Voice of San Diego editorial team featured that story on last week’s podcast.
• A judge threw out a lawsuit seeking to void San Diego’s franchise agreement with San Diego Gas and Electric. (Union-Tribune)
• And, because the city of San Diego didn’t settle a different lawsuit with SDG&E over Pure Water, ratepayers are now likely on the hook for the cost of moving the utility’s infrastructure. (Voice of San Diego),>
• Hundreds of sea lions flocked to Silver Strand State Beach, an unusual sight in San Diego. (NBC San Diego)
• San Diego Padres pitcher Joe Musgrove checked in from his trip to Antarctica on Twitter, and that’s environmental enough for me. (MLB)
• A pregnant, deep-sea octopus laid 200 eggs shortly after her rescue from a prawn trap near La Jolla in 2021, allowing scientists to observe rare octo-mom behavior. (Octopus mothers sleep while holding onto their eggs which is freaking adorable.) (La Jolla Light)
• A new neighborhood plan in Mira Mesa aims to break-up car-centric superblocks and add high-density housing. (Union-Tribune)
• San Diego solar advocates rallied against the state Public Utilities Commission’s new plan that cuts rooftop solar incentives. The commission votes on Thursday to OK those new, lower export rates for selling excess solar back to the grid. (KPBS)
• The Los Angeles Times’ Sammy Roth challenged an investor-owned utility exec’s claims that rooftop solar growth doesn’t hurt their business model.
,>

Voice of San Diego is a nonprofit news organization supported by our members. We reveal why things are the way they are and expose facts that people in power might not want out there and explain complex local public policy issues so you can be engaged and make good decisions. Sign up for our newsletters at voiceofsandiego.org/newsletters/.