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Old Posted Sep 22, 2019, 6:36 PM
Will O' Wisp Will O' Wisp is offline
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Join Date: May 2018
Location: San Diego
Posts: 481
Quote:
Originally Posted by Maldive View Post
I truly don't understand this (lovely) whale carcass in SD... with acres of space seemingly not "animated" at all except by a few pedestrians (presumably bored after surfing, biking or going to the mall).

Seems so out of scale for SD and not a home-run that makes much sense.

P.S. it's a small airport so maybe an "innovative" maglev train from a smaller, inviting, well located meeting place.
You might be more interested in the ITC location then, which is slightly smaller and located closer to the airport.


Very early rendering

There is still a good deal of controversy remaining over the concept selection. The study I linked, although accurate on its own terms, leaves out some potential problems. A lot of them relate to Concepts 1 and 2, and there have been accusations of SANDAG playing favoritism.

One of the largest concerns is that the study left out the cost of relocating the COASTER tracks from Old Town to the new NAVWAR site. NCTD has said the Old Town and Santa Fe stations are too close as it is, and they won't approve a third stop between them. The ITC is too far from Old Town to replace that station, so the NAVWAR site is the only option with a COASTER stop. That's probably NAVWAR's biggest concrete selling point, being able to transfer directly from the COASTER to the APM.

But then again, the COASTER might not be something proponents of NAVWAR might want to bring up, since only 10% of SDIA's passengers come from North County and only a fraction of those use the COASTER. Increasing frequency along the line might raise the latter, but that's a project so far out of scope that it'd be disingenuous to include it in ridership calculations. So having a COASTER station ends up hardly bulging the needle in NAVWAR's direction.

Once you get past all that NAVWAR's benefits are less tangible, although still significant. The ITC site doesn't have the area to leave room for future improvements, what you build is essentially whats going to be there forever. NAVWAR has enough land to leave some aside for, say, Ikahara's much ballyhooed ultra-fast transit system (which he's yet to secure funding for). And, the NAVWAR site contains a significantly greater development aspect



But that's likely to be rather controversial in and of itself....
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