Getting Around: San Diego, CA

I took Amtrak to San Diego. I got off the train, walked across the tracks, past a commuter train, and right there was the trolley (light rail) station. Super convenient! The trolley I needed arrived in three minutes. Hooray! I got right on.

I… walked right passed the tap card reader. I guess I was too excited about how close it was.

In my defense, as you can see in the picture, it was positioned away and to the side of the platform, which is odd.

Ahead of time, I saw that San Diego transit, like many modern cities, has tap-to-pay. Bus as I walked to the train, I didn’t see any readers.

Fine, I thought, the readers are probably on the train.

They were not. But guess who was!

😱Fare Inspectors!😰

In all my travels, this was actually my first encounter with fare inspectors for a tap-to-pay system, so I was kinda excited to see them.

They could see I was confused, when I asked where the readers were (in Portland, many are on board), and they let me jump off at the next stop to tap and get back on.

They even gave me a mini-tour of their mobile card reader. I needed to select the correct card in my digital wallet (my default payment card is different from my default transit card), and they showed me what a “NO” and a “YES” look like.

They were really chill and super helpful. But it was San Diego, after all.

The next day I had a look at a station, and there was only one tap reader, and it was at one far end of the platform. Really not a great configuration.

San Diego has fare capping, where there’s a maximum you can pay for transit per day. But it only applies if you use their app, not if you tap a card or your phone wallet.

Kinda frustrating, but whatever.

The app, like many cities, has a bit of an involved setup. Security questions and all of that. Not terrible, but annoying.

I rode several city buses. They were easy! And fast! And clean! And everywhere! And they came about every 10-15 minutes. Mostly on time! The tap readers were quick and responsive. It felt seamless, like a transit system should.

I also took the bus to the airport on my way out. San Diego’s airport is really close to downtown, which made it super easy to take the bus. One route or another departed about every ten minutes, and it was just a 15 minute ride from the Gaslamp District to Terminal 1. Easy Peasy!

It’s a real shame that San Diego’s transit seems to be on a fiscal cliff at the moment. It was really excellent, some of the best and easiest to ride I’ve experienced in the US. And it made it much easier for me to poke around, enjoy the city, and shop quite a bit more than I intended to. I would see places I wanted to go when I was on the bus, hop off, and pop in.

If I’d been there with a car, I would almost definitely have just chosen one or two points of interest, driven over, then driven back. Instead I had a great afternoon popping around Hillcrest, and I’m really looking forward to making return trips.

San Diego is a city that I previously only knew as a tourist destination, and the walkability and good transit (and my pedestrian-first exploration) have changed my perception. It’s a proper, rather exciting, city in its own right.

And there were people out and about, which is the elusive part many cities struggle with, especially post-COVID.

It feels like all the best parts of L.A. without all the mind-numbing traffic in between. (I know it has its burbs, but the sprawl seems less vast, less angry.) The food scene is top tier, and a lot of it is open late!😍 The biking infrastructure is rather good. Just good vibes all around!