San Diego Trolley

Second only to Washington DC and Singapore, our little red trolley system is great. Buy your ticket and hop on, the honor system. I just go a senior discount card that give me a senior discount and I am happy. The trolley is so good for events where you do not want to drive and park, like baseball, football, concerts. And it goes to several major shopping centers, very convenient. Highly recommended.

I’ve never had a bad experience using the SD Trolley. I would park my car and head to parts of San Diego where parking is hell or the cost of parking is worse.
Compared to public transportation in other cities, the SD Trolley system is not the best, but it nice to have and gets the job done. For $ 5 a day, it’s hard to beat. Just make sure you get home before the last trolley is out and look at football or baseball game schedules to make sure you won’t get packed in like sardines.

Took the trolley and Javier to Mexico.
Fantastic system if you don’t want to rent a car while in town or want to travel further than an über. For $ 5 I recommend the day pass. We picked them up at a kiosk on the platform with a credit card. There are three color lines. On Friday we used the blue line to take Javier to Mexico. It was an easy 30 minute comfortable ride to San Ysidro. The cars are quiet and clean. In the afternoon we switched to the green line to go to Old Town for lunch. It’s an incredibly easy system to use and well worth the cheap price that it is.
All the lines cross at some point making it easy to get to different parts of town to sight see, eat or shop. Maps are very easy to read.

We were docked for the day at the cruise ship port and we wanted to see as much of the city as possible. Someone suggested that we ride the Trolly from one end to the other for $ 5. It was a great ride and gave us some really good views all the way down to the bridge.

I love the trolley I am retired and use the trolley and bus to get around town bus and the trolley for the most part you are on time thanks a lot San Diego.

After taking an extra step in being more environmentally conscious, I decided to start taking the trolley to work (La Mesa to Point Loma).
the worst part is, when you need to transfer and the other trolley arrives a head of schedule and they just leave early! so now you’ll end up waiting another 15,30,or 60 min, depending on the time
of day. I find this service good for game/​special events, but not a reliable commute.

I rode the trolley for the first time today! How convenient!
My husband and I had family in town running the Rock n Roll Marathon. Last year the traffic downtown was awful trying to get out after the concert at Petco Park, but my cousins wanted us to attend, so we took the trolley. It was so easy and quick! We parked at Fashion Valley and rode right up to Petco Park. The two-​way ride warrants buying a $ 6 day pass. Now I know I can take it to multiple destinations in a day if I want to show other out-​of-​towners a few different SD areas. I wish there were more trolley stops. More efficient public transportation is always a good thing!

For $ 2.50 one way which is my preferred method of transit when I got to San Diego and need a way to get to my family in Tijuana I choose the trolley. It seems like everytime I come into town the trolley is always going out of service or decommissioned which ends up making me having to wait and delays your commute. The price is the only plus!

I’ve lived here ever since the trolley started. It was always on time in the beginning, you could set your watch to it, now that they have been making changes, to supposedly make it more effective? The service sucks, it seems that it’s either early and leaves without you or it’s late making you late, or the one you’re waiting for is out of service. We pay for this service, they should be on time!!!

Totally disappointing. In 10+years, we’ve only taken the trolley twice, as it doesn’t seem to go anywhere we want to visit. In retrospect, shouldn’t there be a stops at Balboa Park, the beach, and most importantly, the airport? Having lived in or traveled to many places and try to optimize mass transit to the fullest extent, (by comparison) the SD system is lame. Don’t get me wrong, I love pretty much everything about my town, but mass transit isn’t one of them…

Sickening! My son wanting to be practical and took my car to the Grantville trolley station to take the trolley to his 5 hour shift at the fashion valley mall. Coming back he was told that there was a electrical malfunction and the trolley could only take him to Rio San Diego st. He called me to come get him. Unfortunately he parked my car at the Grantville trolley station. This happened before. I don’t understand. There isn’t even a storm or rain to blame this on. You can’t rely on this horribly inefficient transportation. The worst in the whole USA! My son was wandering around San Diego Rio street in the pitch dark trying to describe where he was. It was 10:30 pm. He just moved here from Pennsylvania and I was very concerned for his safety.

Private security company, that is employed by Universal Services of America (current) and Heritage Security (past), that work for and secure the Metro Transit System. Security company that have this contract is worth more than one million dollars. Security Guards are improperly trained and underpaid yet are asked to act like a police officer. Other cities have police to run their security for trolleys.
TSS officers had tried to Unionize with «Security, Police and Fire Professionals of America» but the negotiations had failed when the contract ended, then was sold to Universal Security.

After driving my car the 150 or so miles down to San Diego, I felt it’d be good to let her rest for a little while. So, I found the nearest trolley station to my parking lot and walked over for a looksee. The Middletown Station was clean, and it’s ticket machines were well marked and easy to use. Seven dollars gets you a day pass on a plastic card ticket. The day pass is $ 5, but the plastic card is an extra $ 2. So, hold onto that plastic card for your next couple of trips to San Diego. From what I understand they’re good for five years. I’ll definitely be back to San Diego before 2019, so I’ll hang onto mine.
The Trolley is quite convenient and goes all over San Diego, and the Day Pass ticket covers all the Busses and Trolleys until midnight of the day you buy it. So you can go to Balboa Park, the Convention Center, the Gaslamp quarter, Seaport village and any of the other touristy places you wanted to go too without having to worry about where to park your car.
The Stations I visited were all pretty clean, and well illuminated at night. I’ll be back to San Diego, and most definitely use the trolleys again.

Oh beautiful San Diego… your downtown public transportation service is so great!
The trolley service took us just about everywhere we needed to go and was basically very easy to understand (once we knew where we were headed exactly). Each ride I noticed that they were clean and bright and everyone seemed very respectful aboard. Even security was friendly. On one instance security came across a man who hadn’t bought a ticket and was obviously trying to get a «free ride» so they quietly just told him to exit at the next stop; no scene, no bullying, no raised voices.
It was a bit confusing at first when trying to figure out which trolley and where we actually needed to be headed when arriving in San Diego, but once we figured all of that out it was awesome!
You can buy 4-​Day passes for, I think, about $ 15 and a 1-​day pass was $ 5. We walked quite a bit and only used the trolley a handful of times during our stay so we just decided to pay the 1-​Way price of $ 2.50 each time. We probably could have saved some money by doing one of the passes but it still saved our feet and was easy on the wallet… BONUS!
I knocked it down a star only because it is a bit confusing to figure out and the people helping you aren’t really all that helpful (I think they assume you know more than you know). Basically the Green Line takes you around one side of downtown, the Orange Line takes you deeper inside and around the other way and the Blue Line heads you off towards Tijuana.
Even with the knocked off star it was overall a great experience and I will always take full advantage of using the MTS on any and all future visits (and I’m planning a lot more, I’ve missed you San Diego!!)
CHEERS!!!

Fortunately I live in mission valley so the trolley is convenient to go to some places but definitely not a lot. My biggest pet peeve with the trolley is their lack of following a schedule. Sure it’s great when things arrive early, but then you need to wait until the time people are expecting. So many times I have gotten to the trolley station 10 min early just to see the trolley pulling away, and then you have to wait up to 30 min for the next one. What is the point in having a schedule?! Extremely frustrating!

Great way to get around the city. Cheap, easy, and convenient.

We took the Trolley to get from our hotel in Gaslamp to Qualcomm stadium. The trolley station closest to our hotel was actually out-​of-​service and we had to walk about 5 – 10 minutes to another stop. Other than that, it was incredibly convenient. The stop at Qualcomm spilled out right at the stadium. At the end of the game, there was quite a huge line to get back onto the trolley but surprisingly, the thousands of peoples waited only 20 minutes or so. As with most public transportation, the lines don’t extend everywhere you need it and there’s a moderate amount of walking involved. But the train cars are quite new, clean, comfortable and it was rather pleasant.

As a visitor to San Diego, I found the MTS extremely convenient and efficient. During my most recent visit, I stayed at the Hilton Gaslamp, and the Gaslamp Station was just around the corner from where our hotel was. Visiting, the trolley and the bus got us to where we needed to get as we wondered through the various touristy sites.
We rode on the Green Line everyday throughout our stay and purchased the 4 Day Pass which was $ 15.00, a good deal since a 1 day pass is already 5 bucks. However, my only gripe was was when were trying to purchase our day passes at the Gaslamp Station, the ticket machine didn’t seem to work. We tried several times using three different credit cards, but each time after he would say «Processing» no ticket would pop out. We also tried using cash, and the cash wasn’t being accepted either. Was a headache to have to go to the next station to get our day passes. Other than this little inconvenience, riding the trolley was pretty easy.
We rode the trolley everywhere, to the Midway Aircraft Carrier Museum, Little Italy, Old Town. We never waited more than 15 minutes for the next trolley to arrive. Also, the regular bus system seemed pretty easy too, as we rode the bus to the Zoo. We found all of the drivers to be very helpful with where to get off and where to connect to other lines.
Overall, as a visitor to the city, we never needed to rent a car to get anywhere. The stops were clearly labeled, drivers were nice, and the wait time for the next arrival never exceeded 15 minutes. Thanks MTS for saving us money on a rental car, and the headache of Southern California traffic.

I used to always exclusively ride the trolley back in the day when I was in the Navy and did not have any wheels. Its rare that I use public transportation anymore but there are times when riding the trolley does have its perks, especially when traveling downtown. Why fight the traffic and pay outrageous fees for parking?
The fares have gone up since I last rode the train but its still only 5 bucks for unlimited trips that are good for the day the ticket was purchased and with gas prices being what they are, that is one sweet deal! I also like that the trolley allows you to purchase your pass with an ATM card now. No more dealing with the hassle of running to the bank or trying to make change just so that you can buy a ticket… nice!
The one drawback to the trolley system is some of the people who use it for commuting. Fully expect to encounter chollos, hoodlums, beggars, tweakers, the mentally insane, and inconsiderate punks who like to put thier feet on the seats.
Some of the trolley stops are in sketchy neighborhoods as well. I really hate the stop at City College. That place not only reeks of weed but I have been approached many times in the past by people looking to sell me drugs. If you are a smoker, be adviced that you must remain 25 feet away from any trolley stop while smoking. If not, the «rent a cops» will surely bust your chops about it!
I like the trolley and think that it is a great deal. I just hate dealing with the people who are crazy or are tripping out on drugs.

Just wanted to throw out a personal thanks to the San Diego Trolly for always providing me a ride to and from the Charger games.
Sure, sometimes there are some long waits (especially after the games).
And sure, there are some shady characters eyeing you probably waiting for you to not be paying attention.
Yet, I always have a ride home after a day of cheering and drinking my guts out !
Once again, Thanks.
Much love– Noël