Just when we thought things couldn’t get more confusing with the trolleys, Laguna’s city bureaucracy delivers.
The old Visit Laguna app shows us where the trolleys are live—only the function doesn’t work. The new trolley app fixed this function, but there is no other info. Now if you want the whole picture, you need two trolley apps to tell you when the trolley will arrive. The epitome of inconvenience that, considering Uber and Lyft alternatives in town, will never prove to the Council that riders are open to alternative transportation to lighten parking and the city’s heavy traffic load.
Trolleys are seemingly becoming the new Village Entrance—a long process, never finished and without delivering its intended function. Recently, Lagunans were pacified when the city decided to keep neighborhood trolleys for another year—happy to have at least a defunct system rather than nothing.
Would it not be better to try a city subsidy for Lyft and Uber for a year for all routes and use the trolleys only in summer time to support the masses? If we are spending $2.5 million per year on the trolleys, that would be 35,000 rides per month using the rideshares. Uber and Lyft can give us real statistics, helping us figuring out who, when and where alternative transportation is used. We would learn so much about making transportation easier, if our politicians would just recognize its importance and take our traffic/parking issues seriously.
Or let’s try a hybrid solution with Uber and Lyft in the neighborhoods and trolleys that run every 15 minutes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. on PCH and Canyon. Yes, we will need to find a solution for the few kids that can’t rideshare, but they don’t justify the current waste to keep the status quo. The current system is so emotionally draining for everyone involved due to its abundant senselessness.
Why is the city ignoring these facts? I challenge anyone to give me one good reason we should keep going in this frustrating vein.
Michaell Magrutsche, Laguna Beach
To get the whole story look at the links below:
https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/letter-a-tricky-decision-on-trolleys-and-traffic/
https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/lettercan-lagunas-trolleys-ever-be-useful/
https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/letter-trolley-saga-continues/
https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/letter-calling-attention-to-lagunas-trolley-system/
https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/letter-disappointed-with-trolley-service/
https://www.lagunabeachindy.com/letter-traffic-schmaffic/
The best researched article about hybrid solutions I could find
https://nytransit.org/resources/transit-tncs/205-transit-tncs
Oh, no……subsiding ride shares either independent or fully employed drivers and their cars as a solution to the trolly folly? I think not: adding even MORE cars to our streets is not a solution. As well many of the uber/lyft set stop in the middle of Coast right or left lane to allow peeps out or in( NOT safe by any means), many also park/stop in RED curbed zones and often they are making illegal lefts off Coast or cruising through stop signs. And I’ve never seen a trolly do THAT! And the trolley drivers smile and wave if you do the same to them!!!!
Perhaps whomever at the city level that decided on which app company , just like the ill-fated parking app, didn’t know much of technology and bought into the worst available.
On a historical note, since 1993 I’ve pondered the signs at the trolley stops, have barely figured out how, when and where the trolleys are….even the old school posters were a jumble of times/locations/numbers.
So I just walk.
I think the title of this piece should be “Trolley Schmolley”.