2018: “Access to Justice” — Operations Begin for the San Diego Trolley’s Courthouse Station

April 29, 2018

Two days after it had been dedicated by local public officials, a light rail station in San Diego was opened to passengers. This station was built near the San Diego Central Courthouse, which had been officially inaugurated just a little more than four months earlier. Courthouse station marks the western terminus of the San Diego Trolley’s Orange Line.

The San Diego Trolley is a light rail network serving San Diego County. This network is a subsidiary of the San Diego Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) and it first went into service in 1981. Courthouse station had the distinction of being the first new station within the aegis of MTS since 2005.

At the time of Courthouse station’s opening, Kelly Hessedal of KFMB-TV in San Diego reported on the significance of the location of this link in the Orange Line. “The new trolley station will make getting to jury duty — or work — much easier for many San Diegans as the station is just steps from the new superior court building,” she noted.

Peter Deddeh, a judge of the San Diego Superior Court, likewise underscored the benefit of having the new station so close to the courthouse. “This state-of-the-art transit stop is about access to justice,” he said in an interview with the Times of San Diego.

Courthouse station is one of 62 stations that collectively form the San Diego Trolley. This network holds the record as the oldest second-generation light rail system in the United States. In 2025, the San Diego Trolley was second only to Los Angeles County’s Metro Rail as the American light rail system with the highest ridership.

Photo Credit: ProcrastinatingPuma (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

For more information on Courthouse station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Courthouse_station_(San_Diego_Trolley)

Additional information on the San Diego Trolley is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Diego_Trolley