San Diego’s public transport wing MTS have been cutting back hard on bus service. Pictured is an example of the new 20 minute wait times for one bus that goes through the heart of the metropolitan area.
Twenty f**king minutes?!!!
MTS desperately wants to onboard new ridership, but have undermined their effort with service cutbacks.
No one with a car is going to wait that long. People of lesser means will suffer extra. They have no choice.
#sandiego #sdmts #mts #publictransit #toddgloria 
Good news for rational San Diegans: the City Council approved high-density zoning changes for some neighborhoods yesterday.
Bad news for our local NIMBYS (and there are plenty): cities are always in motion. To think your neighborhood must NEVER change, and must ALWAYS remain exclusionary to most, is unrealistic dreaming.
San Diego city council approved Blueprint SD yesterday. It is an affirmation of the city’s commitment to density and vision of a transit-based future.
But there is no money or political will to improve San Diego’s transit system. There are no express trains getting people to work centers from the suburbs, no metro efficiently letting people quickly navigate the city, and no high-speed train services to Los Angeles (it’s actually faster to drive).
Don’t get me wrong. I desperately wish we had all that. I support what the city council is trying to do, too. But our current transit system is too slow and inconvenient.
#sandiego
Please forward this to the arseholes who talk too damn loud on their phones!!
San Diego’s mayor really pushing for the city to finance what would be the largest homeless shelter in the USA to the tune of ~$30M a year.
There are thousands of chronic homeless people in downtown San Diego. The shelter could definitely provide just the help so many need.
But…
…$30M annually?
Even a city report pooh-poohed the idea, much to the mayor’s chagrin.
Just listened to Vicky Farewell’s song ‘Are We Okay?’ for the umpteenth time. ❤️
#vickyfarewell #vickynguyen
Have you two watched this? I think it’ll float your boats: rescuing diaries and journals
Uhg, soooo preachy. HODL should have added: god approves of this message.
Same kind of holier than thou moralist that harkens to other people of the same ilk. The Prohibition era comes to mind, for example.
I knew a religious zealot keen on indoctrinating everyone he knew. Used the same rhetoric: you’ll regret it if you don’t, you’ll help grow your religious family, you’ll be surrounded and taken care of by all things church, blah, blah, blah.
🤮
California’s “Junk Fee” law went into effect yesterday. It included prohibiting restaurants from charging surcharges.
What a good thing for consumers.
But (yes, there’s a “but”), the law was modified just hours before going into effect excluding restaurants from charging hidden junk fee charges like surcharges.
In other words, various Californian restaurant associations paid off the right politicians to change it. You see, restauranteurs that use surcharges are making a killing off it = earning money for no added service or menu value.
Said restauranteurs will argue the surcharge helps pay employees’ health care, or subsidizes tips.
I don’t believe that bullsh*t. And im sad to see our politicians fail us yet again.
#gavinnewsome #junkfeelaw #surcharge #california
Looks like the lower left corner says 1901. Kinda hard to see.
San Diego is the USA’s 7th or 8th largest city, and on the border with massive Tijuana, Mexico.
Yet the transit system is, for the most part, not up to the task.
Most ideas to pay for new transit, real transit, are stymied by NYMBYs who are often able to pressure local politicians to nix transit improvements and enlarging.
Freeways. It’s all we can build, seemingly. Promise to build people a freeway that will fill up with cars every day and they will be happy. They will be “free”.
True freedom is having the choice to drive or ride transit. But continually underfunding transit disincentivizes people from using it.
Where’s the freeway?
San Diego’s transit system is going through turbulence. City politicians are arguing about fare-skippers on the trolley (light rail) system. It turns out 95% of fare payments are never checked, according to the San Diego Union-Tribune.
And on the rare chance that someone is checked for proof of payment, there is no heavy fine or light fine to pay for fare-skipping. The guilty simply must purchase a face value ticket at the time of control. It’s been so since 2020 when Wokeism and Social Equity movements were at fever pitch in this city.
The result is simple: There is no incentive to buy a fare. Ever.
Some city leaders say fines must be imposed, while others say poor people can’t afford the $2.50 (valid for two hours with transfers if using the local transit card/app).
Here’s the deal. Make the entire system free for everyone or don’t. There’s no practical way for police staff to determine who can and cannot afford to pay. The politicians who want to continue subsidizing the system for poor people are guilty, in my opinion, of reverse economic classism.
#joelacava #sandiego #jennifercampbell #stephenwhitburn #henryfoster #marbivonwilpert #kentlee #raulcampillo #vivianmoreno #seanelorivera
Any opinions on “hostile architecture”?
Plenty of it to be found in San Diego’s urban neighborhoods.
Critics say it is a cruel way to treat chronically homeless people, many of whom have nowhere to go. They lament that hostile architecture is used to dissuade encampments alongside buildings. Where are the chronically homeless to go, after all?
But it’s never just encampments. It’s about safety for everyone including tax paying citizens. Maybe hostile architecture keeps some chronically homeless from defecating in the nooks and crannies of the exterior of the building where you live. Raw feces pose a danger to everyone. It can carry all kinds of nasty things like hepatitis and other diseases.
Hostile architecture might keep a chronically homeless person from using drugs there; from acting out on severe mental health issues; from not using the area to change clothes during which they completely expose themselves to you and your children as you walk by.
Yes, the chronically homeless issue is complex. I’m all for trying to find solutions.
But. But I also live the reality of being in close proximity to this city’s chronic homeless problem. Hostile architecture works to keep everyone safer.
Period.
Consistently late public transit is self-defeating during a time when American transit agencies try to lure more riders.
I ride transit several times a week. Usually here in San Diego, the bus is often a little bit late. But sometimes you get those real bad days… 
I wish I had said that.
Glass of wine, fly red eyes when possible, noise canceling ear buds