Style: | San Diego Trolley |
Gillespie Field | |
Address: | 1990 North Cuyamaca Street |
Borough: | Santee, California |
Country: | United States |
Coordinates: | 32.8271°N -116.9821°W |
Owned: | San Diego Metropolitan Transit System |
Operator: | San Diego Trolley |
Platforms: | 2 side platforms |
Tracks: | 2 |
Structure: | At-grade |
Parking: | 175 spaces[1] |
Bicycle: | 8 rack spaces, 2 lockers[2] |
Code: | 75022, 75023[3] |
Opened: | [4] |
Rebuilt: | 2005 |
Former: | Weld Boulevard (1995–2005) |
Other Services Header: | Future services |
Mapframe: | yes |
Mapframe-Zoom: | 14 |
Gillespie Field station (formerly Weld Boulevard station) is a Green Line station of the San Diego Trolley in the San Diego suburb of Santee, California. It is located across Marshall Avenue from Gillespie Field, a county airport, however there is no public access to the airport and the surrounding area is sparse and largely unwalkable. The station has no bus connections, therefore most passengers who use the station also use the 175 space park and ride lot.
Gillespie opened as part of the fourth and final segment of the East Line (now Orange Line) on July 26, 1995, which extended the physical line from to . With the opening of the new Green Line in July 2005,[5] this service was replaced, and Orange Line trolleys began to terminate at this station. This was due to the path between Gillespie Field and Santee Town Center being single tracked, and having two lines running on that route would cause operational issues.[6]
Orange Line service was further truncated to on September 2, 2012, as part of a system redesign due to low ridership between the two stations, so only the Green Line now serves this station.[7]
It was ranked worst rail station in California in a 2015 UC Berkeley School of Law study, due to its sparse, unwalkable location and lack of ridership.[8] Study co-author Elkind was quoted in the press, “I almost wondered if there was really a station out there or if we got the GPS wrong. It looked like cow pastures.”[9]
There are two tracks, each served by a side platform. Just north of the station, service merges onto a single track.