San Diego’s planned new trolley line is expected to bear the name of one of its biggest destinations.

University of California, San Diego is poised to enter into an approximately $30 million deal with the Metropolitan Transit System to dub the Mid-Coast Trolley Line the “UC San Diego Blue Line.”

The moniker is a nod to the school’s campuses, medical center and facilities that all sit alongside the proposed mass transit route.

(AARON Steckelberg / Union-Tribun)


Besides rights to name the trolley, the station at Old Town will be called the “Old Town UC San Diego Health Campus South,” and the university will also get to name the two new trolley stations on its campus in La Jolla. The institution’s logo will appear on station signs, trolley maps, schedules, one-way tickets, and on major advertisements wrapped around trolley cars. It also gets to be the exclusive health care, research and education advertiser on the line.

Details of the 30-year deal will be discussed at Thursday’s MTS meeting. Funding from the university will come from nonstate sources, documents show. MTS declined to comment and a spokesman at UC San Diego did not respond to a request for comment.

UC San Diego will pay MTS $675,000 for naming rights while the line is under construction. On the first year of trolley service the fee will increase to $945,000. After that, the annual cost will increase with the local inflation rate.

The Mid-Coast Trolley Line is a nine-stop extension to the Blue Line. Construction is expected to begin early next year, and rail service on the route will stretch from Santa Fe Depot downtown northward to University City. Along the way it will stop at Old Town, two stops at UC San Diego, and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, among other new stations. The route ends at the University Town Center Transit transit center. Rail service is expected to start four years after construction begins.


The San Diego Association of Governments will pay for half of the nearly $2 billion project with the region’s half-cent transportation sales tax. The rest of the money will come from the Federal Transit Administration.

The naming rights deal will be discussed at Thursday’s MTS board of directors meeting at 9 a.m. on the 10th floor at the James R. Mills Building at 1255 Imperial Ave., San Diego.