Can San Diego End its Dependence on Cars?

I always joke with my friends that I must spend at least an hour a week standing on the corner of 30th Street and El Cajon Boulevard, waiting to cross.

In the heart of North Park, this is one of the most walkable, busable, bikeable places in the city. Four bus lines carry riders to and from stops spanning from La Mesa to downtown. Bike traffic accumulates in the 30th Street bike lane. A small crowd of pedestrians waits on the corner – myself among them.

Still, I’m in the company of no less than 30 cars, waiting for their green light right alongside me. I feel them watching me cross the six lanes of traffic, but apparently not closely enough – I’m nearly struck by a driver trying to make a right-hand turn. When I cross by bike, the potholes are unavoidable.

This story is part of our Big Questions Facing San Diego in the Next 20 Years reporting project. Read more stories here.

Even at the best of times, in the best of places, San Diego’s car-free transportation options are not good. It makes perfect sense to me why most people drive everywhere. Transit will almost always take longer, and it’s probably not very close to your house. Unless you have no other choice or pay “walkable neighborhood” rent prices, going out of your way to reject car culture feels borderline masochistic.

Alas, the planet isn’t getting any cooler – and greenhouse gas emissions from cars are a massive culprit.

San Diego has a plan for a more sustainable future, one with “mobility hubs” and express bus lanes, and progressive politicians claim to support it. Yet, history suggests their allegiance to the long-term vision is less important than cutting their short-term political losses.

This plan will require most of us to drive less, but it also delivers on things that politicians and voters say they want: better transit, increased walkability, shorter commutes, safer infrastructure. These investments are largely incompatible with transportation as we know it. It’s no coincidence that the “walkable” neighborhoods where most people want to hang out also have the least parking.

The plan is not all stick and no carrot, but San Diegans seem to want all carrot and no stick. 

California’s car culture currently thrives on a collective cognitive dissonance, and it’s reflected in our infrastructure. We call ourselves environmentalists but allow our transit systems to languish. We remove bike lanes just months after installing them. We reject much-needed housing near transit over parking spots.

We want the transition to be painless, and reject it when it isn’t. In doing so, we only make it more painful later.

Friction is the core principle behind most policies intended to discourage driving. In a recent essay, economic commentator Kyla Scanlon defines it as “the effort required to move through systems.” In other words, if we make it harder to drive, people will do it less.

In this case, it’s mostly economic. Policies such as charging more for parking, increasing registration fees for car owners and taxing drivers by the mile encourage behavior changes by making it more expensive to drive and generating revenue to invest in more sustainable alternatives. These policies will become increasingly important in the coming years as gas tax revenue – which our infrastructure depends on – is undermined by electric vehicles.

Policy based on friction makes sense, but politics are another story.

The last local bureaucrat who tried to change transportation in a big way is, according to his LinkedIn profile, #OpenToWork.

Hasan Ikrhata led the regional transportation agency SANDAG for five years before departing in 2023. His vision relied heavily on taxing people for every mile they drive, or a road-usage fee. Basically, the friction final boss.

“God knows they crucified me in San Diego, but I tried,” Ikrhata told me over the phone from his home in Los Angeles, where he now teaches at UCLA’s Institute of Transportation Studies. 

Nobody was under the delusion that politicians from car-dependent areas like North and East County would be happy about a mileage tax, but the shock came when Democratic leaders from urban and coastal areas backed out a week before the vote. 

The road-usage fee was dead. At least for the time being.

State mandates say the San Diego region has 10 years to cut its greenhouse gas emissions 19 percent from 2005 levels, which will be extremely difficult to do without a mileage tax. Finding a way to mitigate driving while generating funds for transit is also a central component of SANDAG’s 2025 Regional Plan.

Some states already have some version of a road-usage fee, and many more are considering it – including California. Experts largely agree the shift from gas taxes to mileage taxes is inevitable.

“All you have to do is start charging people the real cost of driving,” Ikhrata said, referring to the environmental, health and infrastructural costs of cars, “then people would run and force politicians to put out other alternatives.”

Still, the road user charge deserves scrutiny. Implementing a policy that requires tracking mileage will require safeguards to protect drivers’ privacy. Progressives are also quick to cite equity concerns. High gas and car insurance costs already create transportation barriers for many low-income people, and some fear a mileage tax would only exacerbate that. 

These concerns are legitimate, but they should be the start of a conversation, not the end of one.

Our rejection of the mileage tax and policies like it rests on the assumption that the status quo is somehow better or more equitable than the alternative, or that people would be willing to change their behavior under less arduous circumstances.

Consider the fact that our transit system, which low-income people are far more likely to rely on, is currently in a financial death spiral with future service cuts looming. If knowledge of our impending climate doom were enough to inspire mass behavior change, would we even be having this conversation?

There is no order of operations to this policy equation that doesn’t involve friction (just as there is no version that doesn’t involve positive reinforcement), and there is no moving backwards. By fighting the inevitable at every turn, we only further delay our relief.

This doesn’t mean everybody has to get rid of their car, but there are many people who would if it were actually realistic to do so. Give those people another option, and the transportation system works better for everybody involved – including anybody who has ever wished there were fewer people on the freeway.

But we must psychologically accept that California is capable of building a better future, and accept our role in building that reality today – both as individuals and as a community. The next generation will be thankful that we did.

Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly suggested the hole in the ozone was growing. The planet is getting warmer, but the ozone hole itself is shrinking.