I-5 lanes to close for trolley bridge construction

FOX 5 San Diego ^ | October 8, 2019 | City News Service

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Association of Governments will partially close a section of Interstate 5 in La Jolla Tuesday evening to continue construction of a future trolley bridge.

Work crews will close all northbound lanes of I-5 from state Route 52 to La Jolla Village Drive from 9:30 p.m. to 5 a.m. Wednesday morning to pour concrete for the future bridge. Motorists on northbound I-5 will be detoured to I-805 via state Route 52, according to SANDAG.

SANDAG crews completed similar closures of southbound I-5 last week to pour concrete for the future trolley bridge, which will cross the interstate just south of Nobel Drive.

The closures are part of the $2.17 billion Mid-Coast Trolley Blue Line Extension, which includes a planned 11-mile extension of trolley service by San Diego’s Metropolitan Transit System from Santa Fe Depot in downtown San Diego to University City.

The extension will add trolley stops in Mission Bay Park, UC San Diego and Westfield UTC, among other areas. SANDAG is receiving $1.04 billion in funding from the Federal Transit Administration to complete the project.

The extension and related projects are intended to reduce traffic congestion as the county’s population increases. Construction on the extension began in 2016 and is scheduled to be completed in 2021.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

Overnight Closure of NB I-5 in La Jolla to Allow for Mid-Coast Trolley Construction (10/8/19)

While the closure already happened, I thought it would be interesting to show how federal tax dollars and some proceeds from SANDAG's half-penny sales tax are going into this choo choo.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

PING.

[Publius]

This new electric line will serve UCSD, which not only has a large student body but is a significant employment magnet. There are also a number of defense-related companies with office complexes in the general neighborhood. It's a good urban investment.

San Diego has the ocean on one side and mountains on the other, which means that the corridor is narrow. I-5 can't be widened to 15 lanes in each direction to handle all the traffic that growth in the corridor will engender, so rapid transit is necessary to provide an alternative.

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

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