Saturday, April 15. One of the principal objectives of this visit to Southern California was to ride San Diego’s heritage PCC line. Called the Silver line, it is operated by the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) as part of the San Diego Trolley, the area’s light rail system. A PCC car runs over a 2.7-mile clockwise loop around the downtown section of the city four days a week, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. I had made two previous attempts to ride it, but on both occasions after arriving there I found that the line was not operating due to “mechanical problems.” I hoped that the saying, “third time’s a charm,” would hold for this attempt.
Originally I had a choice of either Thursday or Saturday, but as it turned out there were a number of reasons to choose the latter. First, my plan for Wednesday had been disrupted because of Gold line trackwork and I thought I might need an extra day on the rails in LA; second, that the weather forecast for Thursday was cloudy; and third, the most important, is that when I checked Google maps for the route I found that the 130-mile journey would take as much as 180 minutes (3 hours) during a weekday rush hour but only 105 on Saturday morning, all because of traffic congestion on the I-5. Why was I going to drive? In order to take Amtrak I would have to get a lift to the Expo line station, ride to Metro Center, and then change to the Red/Purple line to get to Union Station, which would take about an hour (with a built in cushion for possible delays). After that it would be a three hours more on the train. So, with 105 much better than 240, unfortunately this rail advocate had to choose rubber for the day.
I got into the rental car at 8:10 (Cathy had offered me her car if I would have gone on Thursday) and found relatively little traffic on my route, which was west for a short distance on Culver Boulevard t
