The San Diego region’s top transportation planning agency unveiled on Friday an unprecedented multi-billion dollar proposal to add hundreds of miles of high-speed transit lines stretching as far east as Poway, north to Escondido and through coastal communities to Oceanside.

Scores of elected officials from around the region gathered at a special meeting of the San Diego Association of Governments to weigh in on the new plan, which would represent a seismic shift away from building highways and roads to an almost singular focus on public transit.

However, many of the envisioned transit lines would run parallel to congested highways, providing traffic relief along key commuter corridors, said Hasan Ikhrata, SANDAG’s executive director.

“This is not about the transit against the highway and the highway against the transit. It’s about a transportation system that works with all its components,” Ikhrata told his 21-member board and the other elected officials in attendance.


The expansion would dramatically increase transit ridership, from roughly 1.5 percent of vehicle trips today to about 10 percent when completed, he said. “Most congestion in the region is caused by the last 5 percent of vehicles entering the system. If I take twice that from the (highway) system, I create 100 years of capacity.”

In order to realize the vision, billions of dollars in funding will need to be secured from voters and other sources, likely from multiple tax increases. The first test will come when the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System puts a sales-tax increase on the 2020 ballot requiring two-thirds voter approval. SANDAG is considering its own tax measure sometime thereafter.

Ikhrata also called for nixing many long-anticipated highway improvements and expansions to free up funding and contain greenhouse gases in line with state mandates.

Those projects — promised when voters approved the half-cent sales tax Transnet in 2004 — include adding express lanes to state routes 78 and 52, as well as widening state routes 67 and 56.


East and North County elected officials quickly pushed back, arguing that abandoning those and other projects would undermine the SANDAG’s credibility if and when the agency goes back to the voters for another tax increase.

“If we don’t have the integrity of following through and giving what we promised to the voters, we’re not going to get this passed,” said County Supervisor Jim Desmond, who previously served as the mayor of San Marcos. “I can tell you this won’t pass up in North County, probably not in East County.”

Santee Mayor John Minto also expressed frustration.

“We have to make sure that people trust us,” he said, adding, “I know that (state Route) 52 is challenged. We need to get things moving better on that, and I don’t believe that I can count on my metropolitan planning organization to get the money to do the work.”


In contrast, mayors and council members from the region’s largest urban areas hailed the plan, throwing their full support behind Ikhrata.

“This is exactly what I wanted to see,” said San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, adding: “This is all about economic development. It’s all about growing jobs in every city.”

Chula Vista Mayor Mary Salas echoed that sentiment, saying that the expanded transit system would help lure industry to the region.


“San Diego’s a great place, but we know that we’ve long been considered a cul-de-sac, hard to get to, and that has really impeded our ability to attract huge companies here that would really raise the quality of life for all of us,” she said.

Notably, the blueprint included the much-debated Purple Line, an envisioned trolley route that would run from the Otay Mesa border crossing, through National City, the city of San Diego and to Oceanside.

The plan also called for double tracking the Sprinter commuter rail while also extending it from San Marcos to Carlsbad. The tracks that serve the Coaster and Amtrak trains along the crumbling bluffs would be rerouted into a tunnel below Camino Del Mar, also known as Highway 101.

Nearly every city in the region would get a so-called mobility hub, in many cases connecting commuter rail, buses, trolleys and other transportation options at one location.


SANDAG said that it would release a cost estimate along with potential sources of funding for the vision in coming months. The price tag will likely run in the tens of billions of dollars.

Nearly everyone from the public who attended the meeting spoke out in support of the plan, including a number of environmental groups, labor organizations and others.

“Congratulations,” said Haney Hong, president and CEO of the San Diego County Taxpayers Association. “I think it’s very exciting to put together some very bold plans for thinking about how we move people and goods around the region.”

The question of whether construction of future rail lines would be subject to labor agreements that favor unions was left dangling.


The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 569 spoke out in favor of having the work subject to a project labor agreement, while the Coalition for Fair Employment in Construction blasted the idea as unfair to many in the trades.

County Supervisor Kristin Gaspar and others on the SANDAG board said they wouldn’t be able to vote for any proposal that include the union-friendly labor stipulations.

