San Diego – December Nights – the largest gathering in San Diego for the holidays – will take place on Friday and Saturday night and traffic will be very heavy in the areas around Balboa Park. Attendees can avoid much of the traffic by using the Metropolitan Transit System’s Trolley and bus system to get to the festivities. All it takes is four easy steps:
Purchase and store a $5 Trolley/bus ticket on your smartphone using the MTS Compass Cloud app[MO1] at any time prior to arriving at a transit station.
Park free at dozens of park and rides[MO2] to get to downtown San Diego.
Activate your Compass Cloud mobile ticket and take the Trolley to the Fifth Avenue Station (directly serves Trolley’s Orange and UC San Diego Blue Lines, requires one transfer from Sycuan Green Line)
At Fifth Avenue Station either:
Take Routes 3 or 120 (in front of House of Blues on 5th Ave.), which serve the west side of Balboa Park at Laurel and 4th or 5th Avenues
Walk two blocks north and use the City of San Diego’s shuttle that picks up on 5th & Ash. . Please note, there will NOT be a City of San Diego shuttle near City College this year, so please be prepared for potentially long shuttle lines at the 5th & Ash pick up location.
Detour Information:
Due to heavy traffic around Balboa Park during December Nights, MTS is advising passengers on Rapid 215 and Route 7 to plan ahead and prepare for delays from 3-11 p.m. on Friday, and noon-11 p.m. on Saturday. Both bus routes – which normally serve Balboa Park on Park Blvd – will be detouring around the festivities for the duration of the event via SR 163 to Washington St. All bus stops on Park Blvd. between University Ave. (North Park) to C Street (Downtown San Diego) will be temporarily closed. Closed stops at Park Blvd. and University Ave. will affect Routes 1, 10 and 11. All routes will operate on a regular schedule, though may experience delays due to traffic congestion. Please visit the MTS December Nights webpage for more information about detours.
Passengers can also call MTS Information & Trip Planning at (619) 233-3004 or 511 for help planning their trips or for more information.
MTS operates 95 bus routes and three Trolley lines on 53 miles of double-tracked railway. Every weekday more than 300,000 passenger trips are taken on MTS bus and Trolley services in 10 cities and the county. In FY 2018, MTS served more than 86 million riders. For more information on how you can use public transportation and save money, go to www.sdmts.com.
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