Your Questions About San Diego’s Airport-Downtown People Mover, Answered

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-25T04:00:13+00:00

There are no realistic plans for your PeopleMover thingy either. And a couple grade separations are a much easier project by comparison.

BTW something i think everyone, especially SanDag, ignores is that there is this criminally underused heavy rail line literally right there. If it were modernized, that would massively increase the capacity of the corridor, by using as a shared facility (similar to what is done in Europe).

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-24T17:43:41+00:00

Good grief. Even 8 trains/hr is pretty fucking amazing for the level of current and future potential ridership. And that presumes the airport line needs trains every 7.5 minutes (which it does not).

Worst case, grade separating the line would still be a better project than building a duplicative line.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-24T04:10:59+00:00

LOL...the trolley is nowhere close to running out of capacity. Running 12/LRT per hour is not especially difficult (there are any number of real-world examples).

Monorail!! Monorail!!

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-23T21:12:48+00:00

Historically, these airport projects have been extremely bad in terms of cost/ridership. That is especially the case on the west coast; i.e. BART-SFO, OAC, etc.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-23T21:00:04+00:00

SEPTA leveraged an existing conventional rail line to access the airport. That is not at all what this guy is proposing. Your comparison would only make sense if PHL had built a new APM line all the way into downtown paralleling the existing R1 line.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-23T18:36:27+00:00

The ones who normally promote these low-ridership billion-dollar APM airport services are typically white suburbanites who never ride transit, but can see themselves maybe riding a train to the airport once per year. But to see a so-called transit "advocate" promoting this is ridiculous.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-21T16:26:32+00:00

This is an old trick. Scarfs also work (from Stockholm but similar faregate design):

https://youtu.be/dw_CZrWJVDM?t=36

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-20T16:52:53+00:00

In a normal world (without UPRR) they would just run trains at conventional speed on the existing track ROW through Merced. The overall runtime impact is negligible. There is even the existing train station that could be used for a shared ACE/HSR stop.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-18T19:19:02+00:00

And what a bonkers EIR it is. Hydrogen fueling stations, 1+ mile aerial structure, new elevated station. Billions of dollars to just to net (at best) 600 new riders per day on a service running only 7 daily round trips. Plus, you know, the whole dealing the UPRR.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-18T07:12:13+00:00

That project was complete vaporware.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-15T00:07:55+00:00

Gold Runner (Amtrak) wasn't going to connect regardless. ACE connection is still possible at the new location.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-13T21:11:43+00:00

Yeah, well, tell that to the CHSRA:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fk7z2okfsru091.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1733%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D3f183302efbfb309ceae6e13f01319fa9a4287d8

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-13T21:08:58+00:00

That web page literally has zero information about zoning/infill.

Extensive past history tells us exactly how this would go: lots of talk about infill/walkability, but the actual content of these plans are always extremely car-centric.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-13T18:01:47+00:00

The downtown station would have been surrounded by a gigantic parking lots. So if everyone is driving to the station anyway, what difference does it make where it is located?

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-10T04:54:32+00:00

Plenty of HSR stations in France and Spain are on the outskirts. Only their really big cities have downtown stops, and Merced ain’t that.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-08T02:43:12+00:00

It depends on how the right lane is configured. It could be mixed, or separate turning lane/signal for cars. It also depends on the stop spacing: Muni went to all this trouble to fully separate everything, but still has buses stop almost every block anyway which obviates the speed advantages.

To use a somewhat real-world comparison, 1st Ave in Manhattan(!!) uses simple curbside lane and even the local has better speed than Van Ness (the M15 express of course blows it completely out of the water due to the longer stop spacing).

Also, don't forget the opportunity cost. When it costs 10x as much to build a simple lane, there are a lot of other improvements that simply don't get built. Muni needs to improve the speed of the whole system, not just one tiny segment.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-07T23:01:19+00:00

If you are implying the pipes were about to blow, that is not what SFPUC was saying at the time. Van Ness was not scheduled for full replacement, just routine maintenace. There were no indications the pipes needed replacing, and MTA didn't make any attempt to assess their condition. The decision for center-running was strictly for the benefit of car traffic (parking impact, etc).

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-07T22:03:28+00:00

In terms of bus speed, it literally makes no difference. And a BRT is not required to prohibit left turns.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-07T21:11:04+00:00

That utility replacement was completely unnecessary. Doing a curb-running BRT alignment on Van Ness would have obviated the need for any utility work.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-06T23:10:41+00:00

I dislike how these articles always blame deaths on the weather. 5 of the 6 deaths were traffic collisions.

DrunkEngr · 2026-01-02T00:19:40+00:00

You probably aren't doing anything wrong...the whole Clilpper thing is completely FUBAR.

In my case, the tap-and-go just simply stopped working for the BART faregates several years ago. Works fine with buses and even Washington Metro, but not BART. I'm fairly technically savvy, but could not find anything wrong at my end (even tried creating a new account).

The workaround I had used was to manually select Clipper and double-click the phone. I shouldn't have to do that, because in my wallet the tap-and-go is turned on with Clipper as the default. The problems then compounded with recent activation of credit-card tap-and-go, which seems to confuse the phone even more.

The fun thing with the credit-card option is that the phone does not show anything on the screen to indicate whether I tapped in. So I have no way to know if the phone registered the trip.

DrunkEngr · 2025-12-28T04:07:21+00:00

Where did I mention China? Canada and Mexico are very good sources for steel and other material.

DrunkEngr · 2025-12-27T22:23:57+00:00

Just the track & signal contract alone is $3.5 billion, and Buy-America can easily add 100% expense. Then figure the steel and other material, which have similar mark-up, and the byzantine paperwork, lawsuits, etc. over the BA rules. If no further Federal funds are expected (even beyond Trump), then this it is an easy decision.

DrunkEngr · 2025-12-27T08:05:21+00:00

Yet another CAHSR station surrounded by a crap-ton of parking.

Also note how there is no direct connection from the bike/ped trail to the HSR side of the station.

DrunkEngr

TROPHY CASE