urbanSTL

I agree with everything you just said. I just want to see expansion, and I'd like to see it spur growth. 

The N-S line could be quite a great thing. I think that you could see an explosion of commerce up near NGA, and down near the state streets. I think the same could happen for downtown. 

Ridership on the trolley has definitely picked up since the weather warmed up and vacation season has begun. 

^I think extending it to residential areas kind of fundamentally misses the point and continues to make the mistake of believing that this is transit. It's not. It's an amusement park ride. You want more people on the ride? Extend it to where visitors want to go. There's no real need to extend it anywhere, to be frank, but if you're going to extend it, Forest Park is the only answer that makes any sense to me. Residents need real transit, not fun edutainment grade stuff. I actually aim to take a small passel of people on it this weekend. (Two railfans, a trolley era local resident, a recent immigrant . . . basically, my family.) I'll get back to you with reviews, but I'd like to see this as a successful attraction. It's a big stretch for all involved, but I can get behind dreamers.

But let's be serious here. This isn't transit. Never was supposed to be. It's a horizontal ferris wheel. A very slow roller coaster. A merry-go-round with iron horses. Sort of. Yes, they got transit money from the feds, but that's just an entrepreneur/impresario not leaving money on the table. He's hardly the only guy getting fed transportation money for something that's more fun than serious.

As transit, connecting the attractions in forest park would be ad advantage.  I believe there is still the shuttle?

I was in the loop for lunch yesterday and intentionally drove down Delmar in hopes to see it going by, and was able to capture it as it made the bend onto westbound Delmar.  It was about 1:15 and the ridership was lackluster on that trip.

As much as I had hoped it wouldn't be the case, the truth is this thing is a tourist ride, not transit. There are no posted schedules. I wonder if there is a timetable at all. My sole attempt to use it to go somewhere met with failure. The train could not leave the Pageant stop because a car was parked illegally, so the conductor had to start what was surely going to be a long process of having it towed. I hopped off and walked. As far as I could tell, I was the only non-tourist on board. It might become more useful if 3 things happen: Post schedules. Run more trains. Stop cars from parking illegally and blocking the tracks. What is the likelihood of any of that?

On a positive note, the windows in these things actually open! You can feel the breeze as you trundle down the tracks. That's something.

I could see it being used more if we see a ton of growth down DeBaliviere. It wouldn't surprise me to see residents use it to go to their favorite restaurants/bars, or to shows, or work. 

But - are there weekly or monthly passes? I kind of doubt it. I wouldn't want to pay $2 or $3 every time I had to ride the thing. 

The only way it would offer residents any kind of utility at all would be to make it free or offer extremely subsidized monthly passes. I'm talking around $10 a month. Most of the trolley ridership is one day pass riders, tourists that spend the day utilizing the Loop area and Forest Park. 

A local resident has almost no reason to use the trolley at all. While transit is plentiful along the route, the vast majority of residents to have their own cars. Free parking is easy to find in the Loop and along the etirity of the route. If my girlfriend and I want to go get dinner in the Loop and took the trolley from Debaliviere Place, the round trip would cost $8 and take significantly longer than driving. The Trolley is a development tool that completely ignores the residents that it is trying to attract, by subsidizing rates for residents the Trolley can mobilize the dense neighborhoods filled with young professionals into spending their money along the route.

^See, that's the thing. The neighborhood isn't simply trying to attract residents. It is and virtually always has been a tourist destination wrapped in a college town and seasoned with daytrippers. Sure, there are residents. More now than ever before. But there are also probably more tourists now than ever as well. And lots and lots of periodic visitors from elsewhere in the metro area. (Me, for instance. I am not now and never will be a resident there, but I do stop by every now and then for the entertainments offered. Much like virtually everyone else I know.) Sure, the place needs residents and things that cater to them, both long term settlers and short term college students. But it also benefits mightily from the entertainment dollars that tourists, both foreign and domestic, spend there: at restaurants, clubs, theatres, and curiosity shops. In an ideal world the entertainments should serve the needs of both local residents and visitors. But let's be blunt, the trolley is a carnival ride. It's merely funsies. Literally no one needs that sort of thing every day. The only reason anyone is going to ride it is if they want to ride a trolley. Much like the zoo train or the train at Six Flags. Nobody takes the zoo train to get from the elephants to the gorillas. They walk. In fact, nearly everyone who rides the zoo train gets off exactly where they got on. That's how these things work. The trolley will be much the same. It's an amusement park ride, not transportation. Period. Simple as that. Nostalgia. A short cheap tourist railroad. This is basically the way tourist railroads ALWAYS work. Even fancy/famous ones really don't function as transportation in the traditional sense. You don't take the Durango Silverton from Durango to Silverton for your skiing vacation. 99.9% of the people that ride it ride up, get off while the crew services the train, maybe buy a souvenir or a bite of lunch, get back on and ride the very same train back. If the train went in a circle and never stopped they'd have about the same ridership. No real difference at all. Very very few survive on ridership alone, and many fail because they can't attract funding. I won't say this will be a success. It very well may not. But it's really dang early in the game and you cannot judge it based on something as simple how much people living within walking distance of it use it. That's just not what it's for. Never was intended to be. It's nostalgia, pure and simple. Would be nice if it were more useful to loop residents, but it's absolutely not necessary to what it is. It might be possible to make it something else, but it would cost a LOT more money and it would look very different on some very fundamental levels.

No joke:


https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/met ... 11197968c6

I’m actually 100% here for this. When life gives you lemons...

2024 America’s Best Music Venues:
Loop Trolleys | St. Louis



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Bike/Scooter lanes would have made 1,000-times more sense than this stupid thing. This thing will never pay for itself - that is the 35% of the operating costs it is actually responsible for recouping. I imagine they'll try (be forced) to increase the trolley district sales tax to make up the difference in a couple years time. Then you can just make the thing free (or practically free) to ride! Ridership will drastically increase, and spending in the Loop might increase as a result as well, further funding the Trolley!

its a mess and it has been from the get go
    Loop Trolley project is a $25 million Federal Transit Administration (FTA) Urban Circulator Grant.
http://www.looptrolley.com/funding/

The trolley folly is better than the arch grounds? And the only squealing will be from the taxpayers who paid and will continue to pay for this boondoggle.  

The trolley seems to be serving its purpose so far. I like that they're having fun with it. MetroLink has hosted concerts before (Pokey LaFarge among them). Why not? It'll get a few people riding and it also works as a PR stunt to get some coverage and awareness. Looks like at least the P-D, KSDK and Riverfront Times picked up the story, although the latter's snarkiness is pretty tiresome. 

Riverfront Times = snarkiness= tiresome 

Pretty much sums it up. 

I don't think a TDD can have a sales tax >1%

I love the one new member that's made no other contributions to this forum other than trolling the Trolley page. 

1556/16 days of operation = 97 /day

^That doesn’t seem like a stable cash flow.

Let's hope it's not stable at that low level!