San Diego's red trolleys are colorful and popular with a small number of commuters. I like the idea of having a trolley station close to my house … that sounds like as an environmentally responsible nice idea. But "nice ideas" can totally disrupt and destroy a community when they are poorly planned and executed in a way that rewards greed and special interests.
After decades of working behind-the-scenes, with very little "real" community participation, our city and county planners are attempting to ramrod their trolley project before the end of this decade. Development and construction interests pushed for 60' high rezoning, and stand to reap huge benefits from the juggernaut!
But wait … the dastardly plan has been exposed! My neighbors have joined together, today we took action. Hundreds of us marched in protest of 60-foot redevelopment in the zones around the new trolley route. Although I am sure that all of us would welcome modernization of tired 60-year-old buildings, none of us wants to live in a jungle of 6-story stucco boxes. Marchers guided a weather balloon along the route to illustrate what could happen.
Here's some video that I took along the parade route. The red ballon marks sixty feet … most everything else is less than half that tall!
The developers call us "NIMBY's"
…but we're just trying to save San Diego from itself!
