Fast, fun and not-so-free trolley

Down the road, city trolleys may carry surfers to the beach, drop kids off at school and provide a missing link between the east and west sides of Manhattan Beach.

On Tuesday night, after being presented with the results of a trolley system needs-assessment that began in 2008, the City Council directed staff to send out requests for proposals to trolley service providers.

The Council hopes that a trolley system – with free or low fare — will take up to 127,050 people off the road each year, easing residents’ travel in the city and helping the city reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to seven percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

“All we’ve done here is try to assess the feasibility of a trolley system on routes that would address the needs based on our conversations with the stakeholders in the community, being the children, being the seniors, being the people on the east side that have difficulty and have always been challenged,” Councilmember Nick Tell said.

The council proposed the city look into a two-trolley system, with routes on the north and south sides of the city. The south route would roughly cover the area outlined by Manhattan and Marine avenues, Aviation Boulevard and Second Street. The north route would roughly cover the area bounded by Highland and Rosecrans avenues and Aviation and Artesia boulevards. Each route would have 18 to 23 pickup/drop-off points.

“The most anyone would have to walk to get on a trolley is eight blocks,” said Greg Meeks, owner of Rural transit Consultants (RTC), the company that provided the assessment.

The trolleys will hold 35 to 40 passengers and run for either 10 or 14 hours a day, 7 days a week for all but five days of the year.

“These are not the sort of the diesel-spewing, smoke-seeping ones people fear, so it would be not destructive to neighborhoods,” Tell said. “It would ultimately be a way to augment our focus on the green side of things and address real needs.”

The council first considered developing a trolley service for the city as part of their 2005-2007 Work Plan. The city was skeptical about the $200,000 to $300,000 annual cost staff estimated at that time. In early 2006, requests for proposals were sent to 18 service providers, but all vendors declined to submit proposals due to the relatively small scale of potential service in the four square mile city. In December 2008, the city contracted RTC for $27,000 to assess the feasibility of a trolley system in the city. RTC owner Greg Meeks had developed similar systems that provide everything needed for trolley start-ups and operations in the small towns of Cambria and Avila Beach.

Meeks has since met with schools, business associations, hotels and residents to assess the public’s transportation needs. He also looked into grants, especially those geared toward environmentally-friendly transportation efforts, and spoke with local organizations and hotels about buying into the service.

“There is a huge need, but with only two buses, you can’t run seven days and go to the middle and high schools,” Meeks said.

“Ask a surfer how a trolley would affect him surfing?” he added, noting that he commonly sees surfers riding with their surfboards on trolleys in beach cities.

Meeks said that businesses in the city expressed the need for transportation to the Manhattan Village Mall and the pier. Residents expressed the need for a transportation system that would provide an east-to-west route, a way for kids to get around town safely and the alleviation of parking congestion, especially in downtown areas at night, according to Meeks.

“If we can reduce road trips and home drop-offs at Manhattan Beach Middle School think how many cars you take off the road?” said Mayor Pro Tem Richard Montgomery.

While adding hotels to trolley routes was considered in the past, Meeks noted that the addition would increase route time and increase the distance from every residence to the nearest stop to 12 blocks.

“Going to hotels is fulfilling tourists’, not residents’, needs,” Tell said.

Meeks pitched trolley rides as “fun, fast, and free” for residents, but the city would have to lease trolleys for $12,000 to $15,000 per vehicle annually or purchase used trolleys for roughly $40,000 to $80,000 per vehicle. Annual maintenance and operational costs range from $360,160 to $437,160, depending on whether the trolley runs 10 or 14 hours a day.

“It has a catchy mantra: ‘fun, fast and free,’” said Richard Zeif, Vice Chair of the Manhattan Beach Senior Advisory Committee. “But we have to also add financially expensive.”

The council will consider several funding sources, including Proposition R monies totaling roughly $360,000 a year for city transportation improvements.

Some senior residents were concerned a trolley system would threaten funding for Dial-A-Ride — the city’s curb-to-curb bus service for residents who are disabled or seniors over the age 55 — which will soon rely on Proposition R money, as other funding runs out. Dial-A-Ride costs residents 25 cents each way within city and 50 cents each way outside of the city.

“We have an existing internal transportation system, we have a very substantial investment in and it works very well,” Zeif said. “Dial-A-Ride serves us 20 percent plus of the population of Manhattan Beach older adults and disabled.”

The city said the proposed trolley system would not impact the Dial-A-Ride program.

“The idea that this project would somehow be mutually exclusive with Dial-A-Ride is false,”

Mayor Pro Tem Richard Montgomery said. “We’re looking for them to complement each other.”

Staff will move forward with sending out requests for proposal.

“The key thing is to make it convenient and something people can count on,” Tell said. ER

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