Sorry, but 40 years ago, as a journalist, I was more responsible than anyone for the name San Diego Trolley on our region’s urban rail system.
I now confess my mistake in pushing the word “trolley” in article after article from the time the first lines were proposed in 1978 until the name was approved in 1980. After dozens of high-speed rides over the past few months on the system’s four lines, I think it’s time for a moniker that better suits today’s reality.
Planned in early 1978 as a 16-mile line connecting Santa Fe Station with the Mexican border, the urban rail line would have used the abandoned track of the defunct San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railroad, except for a two-mile section along C Street and 12th Avenue in the heart of downtown. The late Neal Morgan, in a three-point column in the Evening Tribune, quickly gave the line the derisive tag of the “Tia Juana Trolley,” reflecting general skepticism among city officials at the time.
Morgan mocked the idea and its driving force, state Sen. James Mills, a humorless transportation pioneer and former San Diego State University history professor who authored legislation to provide state funding to the Metropolitan Transportation Development Board if the city chose to build a rail system. Mills and the MTDB called the project “light rail,” a moniker invented by university planners in the early 1970s to distinguish modern urban streetcar systems from traditional subway and commuter rail service.
When the Los Angeles Times launched its San Diego edition in March 1978, I joined the bureau as a transportation reporter. My editor quickly decided that the controversial rail project was something we should take seriously, but felt that the definition of “light rail” was jargon that would offend readers. To both of us, the planned concept was similar to a modern streetcar, so that term was adopted for our story.
On one occasion, I was sent to Edmonton, Canada, to report on a new commuter line, the model the MTDB was trying to emulate, and the manager admitted that the name Northeast Light Rail Rapid Transit Line was too bureaucratic and long, and said he wished officials had used “trolley” or another alternative.
The Times consistently referred to the plan as the San Diego Border Modern Trolley. After the City Council approved the MTDB plan 5-4 in October 1978, Morgan rarely mentioned the “Tia Juana Trolley,” and the Tribune’s occasional news articles always used the term “urban rail.” The San Diego Union opted for the use of “light rail” for the MTDB.
Mills openly disliked the use of the word “trolley,” whether ironic or neutral, believing it to connote a cartoonish mode of transportation such as that depicted in a pre-World War II cartoon called the “Toonerville Trolley.” He wrote a scathing letter to my editor alleging that I was trying to sabotage the project.
Mills was strongly opposed when the MTDB officially selected San Diego Trolley for the line in July 1980. Board members themselves were not particularly happy with their decision, with Chairwoman Maureen O’Connor stating that, after all, the term “trolley” had become a fait accompli due to the Times report, and official adoption would remove the negative connotations of the Morgan name.
She was quite right. The name “San Diego Trolley” no longer draws comparisons to the defunct cartoon, but it also doesn’t reflect the system’s current vast reach, which has quadrupled to nearly 70 miles, adding route east from Encanto and La Mesa to Santee, Mission Valley to San Diego State University, and, starting in late 2021, north to UC San Diego and University Town Center.
The iconic image is no longer of a modern streetcar plodding down C Street by City Hall, but of a bright red express train curving gracefully along a sleek viaduct above I-5 near UCSD and past Snapdragon Stadium. Today, there are about a dozen similar systems in cities across the U.S., but none of them call themselves trolleys; some stick to the technical “light rail” description, but most opt for versions incorporating “metro rail,” “metro,” or “express transit.”
A Google search for “trolley” reveals that the term refers to the nostalgically designed, open-sided vehicles that travel between tourist attractions in towns large and small, such as the Old Town Trolley, Portland’s Pink Trolley, and the Toonerville Trolley in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
Senator Mills boycotted the ceremony marking the completion of the original line to the border in 1981 and has held a grudge ever since. Any new names within the realm of “trolley” and “light rail” would be posthumous vindication of his vision.
David Smoller is a former reporter for the Los Angeles Times and lives in Tierrasanta.
