Opinion: What a Change Today’s Trolley Represents for Someone Who Rode the Old Streetcars
The San Diego Metropolitan Transit System carries 250,000 people a day. That’s a world of difference from when this author rode the Number 11 streetcar on Logan Avenue to downtown.
Was it 1944 or 1945?
It was one of those years because the war was still being fought in the Pacific.
My great-grandmother Maria and I rode the streetcar every Friday afternoon to meet my mother for dinner after work in the U.S. Grant Hotel’s Rendezvous Room restaurant. Chicken-a-la-King!
The population of San Diego was between 203,000 in the 1940 census and 333,000 in 1950.
We caught the streetcar right outside our apartment at 1803 Logan Avenue and would get off at 5th and Broadway downtown. It cost a nickel.
The streetcars were always full of sailors and Marines. Hundreds of Navy ships were stationed here and literally thousands of Marines were trained at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot, Kearney Mesa’s Camp Elliott and Camp Pendleton.
In fact, at least half or more of all 600,000 Marines in 1945 were based in San Diego. At $21 a month for pay, few had cars, so they all rode streetcars and buses.
So the recent news that the board of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System had approved a record $243 million dollar capital improvement budget caught my attention.
That money will buy 38 new buses, 22 new trolley cars and an overhead charging infrastructure to support conversion of the bus system to all-electric vehicles by 2040.
Over $4 million is being spent to post more security officers on trolleys. Both uniformed and plainclothes officers will be on all trains. Passenger surveys convinced the MTS that increased passenger safety is a priority.
New payment methods will allow debit and credit cards to be read by machines. A new 24-hour border-to-downtown bus service will be scheduled. Trolleys will run on 15-minute intervals on all three lines.
When my Nana Maria and I stepped off the full streetcar at 5th and Broadway every Friday, I would hold her hand tightly because I was afraid the mob of sailors and Marines would swallow me up or trample me. Most people in San Diego today have no idea what downtown was like during World War II.
Think of all the movies you’ve seen and recall the street scenes of pedestrians jamming the New York City sidewalks. More people than anyone can count — thousands of people shoulder to shoulder. And I was afraid of them.
When “liberty call” was made on ships on the bay in spring and summer, thousands of sailors in their whites would roll up Broadway from Navy and Broadway piers like a great white tsunami swallowing everything in the way. At least that was what it looked like to me. But what did I know, I was a little kid.
To get to Tijuana, we rode a Greyhound bus for 25 cents on Main Street as there was no other road south. Sailors and Marines who had never been out of their home state filled those Greyhound buses too.
The war and its sailors and Marines helped Tijuana grow from 16,000 in 1940 to 60,000 in 1950. The growth continued to 159,000 in 1960 when fellow under-21 San Diego State students and I would drive down to enjoy double shots of tequila for 15 cents.
It costs more today, and Tijuana’s population has ballooned to 2.4 million.
Downtown San Diego was beyond description during the War. Thousands of people on Downtown sidewalks. Buses and streetcars filled Downtown. I was scared every Friday when I stepped onto the sidewalk. I have no idea how many people rode the streetcars then, but I know how many ride the trolleys today.
MTS reports that it runs 97 bus routes and three trolley lines in 10 cities and unincorporated areas and is studying future expansion of the system.
That’s a world of difference from when I rode the Number 11 streetcar on Logan Avenue to downtown. How much of a difference? MTS reports that the system carries 250,000 people a day, 68 million a year.
Whew!
Raoul Lowery Contreras is a Marine Corps veteran, political consultant, prolific author and host of the Contreras Report on YouTube and Facebook.