San Diego's bus rapid transit line, open for nine months, hasn't improved transit service along El Cajon Boulevard. Critics blame cuts to the original plan.
"El Cajon Boulevard has a ways to go before it becomes the transit corridor planners envision," reports Zoe Schaver.
San Diego's Mid-City Rapid 215 route—a bus rapid transit (BRT) project that took a year to develop and cut many of the benefits of full BRT configuration along the way—has received poor reviews on multiple measures of transit service.
According to Schaver, "[t]he Rapid project, which took a decade to develop, was meant to follow the bus rapid transit, or BRT, model. Initial plans promised a dedicated lane for buses and transit stops with ticketing machines that would speed up the boarding process. Instead, it has a dedicated lane for a short stretch, but shares the road with other cars for most of its route."
The article goes on to explain the cuts (hint: "community pushback)" and begins to explain the implications of the route's poor performance through a corridor that has seen increasing amounts of development investment.
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UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
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