Mixed Signals

I was driving through Downtown San Diego late this afternoon and passed a trolley stopped at a red light. The three-sectioned trolley bulging with passengers sat idle as the vehicles departing downtown joined the surge to preempt the evening commute.

I had a moment of realization, a flash event bounding the synapses of pondering and parsing. This understanding, which released a subtle “hmm” was like finally realizing the simple nature of a once impossible math problem.

The idle train and the passing cars. As usual I thought about transit and the notion of people and things moving like the thoughts journeying through my mind. With all the talk of big moves in public transportation and equally big spending, I realized that the big solutions are irrelevant until we can solve the small, insignificant ones.

I laughed and thought of myself, a gargantuan titan of industry if only in my own thoughts. How minute the eye must be that sees the source of knots that can unlock the tangled ball of yarn.

The trolley system must be in a twist. A train waiting for a group of cars to pass. It was as if the guilty train sighed and let them through like the courteous driver that patiently allows the elderly lady to make a left turn. A train filled with passengers that waits for a car.

The problem is the rail signaling system is backwards. The cars should wait on the train not the other way around. This returns again to the branding of public transportation in San Diego. A train should never wait on a car or truck. The train must take the priority.

I laughed again as I drove on. “The planners that design the systems and even the computers that execute the operations think the same!” I thought humorously. It seems so absurd to me like a ten lane highway with a crosswalk: “excuse me, coming through.”

fortunately this is an easy fix, Big Move #6: Rail takes priority over vehicles in downtown crossings. Make the vehicles wait. Make the drivers honk and wave fists and curse and mock those blasted transit riders as they pass through. Damn those smiling transit riders as they relax, text a loved one, dream out the window, and read their silly books! Damn them!

That small shift is the point of emanation to change the brand of public transportation in San Diego. It is so subtle, so subliminal to the public. It is the start of shifting public perception in a way that drills silently into the psychology of commuters. This strategy dives into the primitive psyche of human nature; me first, I win, you wait for me.

That is what people want to feel. That is the premise which made the first New York subway line a great success. Those early trend setters bypassed the filth and congestion of the city and went underground into the darkness to travel in luxury. Those people did not want to wait, so they rode the rails.

That mindset must be reestablished here in our beautiful city. It can, and making this signal switch will do it. It will not show significant increases in ridership, but many small changes like this will create big ones.

The changes I see are not these big moves we hear about. When I think about that title, I imagine five monster trucks driving down broadway with fireworks and American flags blazing. Its a bit crazy and overwhelming. My thought is a good cop bad cop strategy is more appropriate: Big Moves, Small Moves with the small moves critical to the big moves being effective. The small moves are within reach and get us to the big moves. To me, that is a winning strategy that can be sold to the public. That is something they can understand, absorb, and digest. The Big Moves are difficult to comprehend. The public are not visionary and are not sold on pretty pictures and thoughts of grandeur. They want to know the various costs and impacts. A mixed package of “Important Moves” allows them to step away and see a variety of paths to the top of the mountain. Think of them as the numerous base camps to climb the towering mountain.

Currently, the public is standing in front of a whale so massive they don’t even know it’s a whale, let alone five whales. Sell the package as a section of ocean with five whales, a few dolphins, and some fish.

The tricky part is the vote. With the right timing, the small moves are presented as items that the city and agency has already modified and completed to gain access to the bigger projects.

Also, be wary of having multiple projects and visions because there must be a priority to those and we all know that putting those priority into the publics hands might land us into things that we don’t want and implementing disassociated systems that will further deteriorate another. That would be like the integration of a driverless car fleet into a fledgling public transportation system.

That’s my take anyways. Please invest in All-City Development. My name is Albert Williams, Architect, and I approved this message.