Laguna’s trolleys will keep traveling in several neighborhoods, for now
Neighborhood trolleys will continue rolling through Arch Beach Heights, Top of the World and Bluebird Canyon through Oct. 30, the City Council decided last week in extending the trial of service in those areas.
The council on Aug. 30 unanimously approved spending $30,000 for trolley maintenance and mailers to residents regarding the pilot program, which began this summer and was scheduled to end this past Monday, apparently in an effort to more fully gauge the popularity of the service.
“We’re trying to identify whether there is a desire among the community to have a neighborhood service tying into the other weekend service,” City Manager John Pietig said during the meeting.
In the summer, trolleys run daily on South Coast Highway, North Coast Highway and along Laguna Canyon Road, to serve art festivals visitors. Last year, the city began offering free trolley service in the off-season. These trolleys operate on South Coast Highway only from Fridays through Sundays.
The neighborhood pilot program was introduced to examine the demand for having trolley service stretch into other parts of the city, to give residents another option to leave their cars at home.
The problem for some residents is that the trial trolley service displaced the buses and in some cases reduced stops. While trolley routes in two of the areas, Arch Beach Heights and Bluebird Canyon neighborhoods, mimick those of the city’s main bus service, in the Top of the World area, some stops were discontinued.
(The city maintains, in temporarily replacing one form of transportation with another, that the trolleys offer more flexibility because of their extended hours and the fact that they can be flagged down, whereas buses keep a more rigid schedule.)
City staff made the route changes after residents of Zell Drive petitioned for them because of safety reasons — children frequently play on the street — and noise concerns, city public works Director Shohreh Dupuis told the council.
But this had the effect of inconveniencing others, Chris Quilter, the president of the board of the local group Laguna Beach Seniors, told the council.
The council directed staff to research whether to reinstate a stop near the city’s fire station at 2900 Alta Laguna Blvd., which was included in the bus route, after listening to Quilter describe a friend in her 80s who relied on that stop to catch a bus.
The woman lives by herself, doesn’t drive and depends on city transit for her transportation needs, Quilter said. The nearest stop under the current route is a quarter-mile away.
“It is her opinion that the people who made the changes never took a bus before or had to carry their groceries from a bus stop,” Quilter said in reading a statement from his friend’s care manager, while also indicating that others share similar concerns about proximity to a trolley stop.
“It’s been hard for them,” Quilter said. “It’s not about the trolley or the bus. It’s about the bus being able to get to the stop she has been using.”
Under the bus service, vehicles traveled from Temple Hills Drive and along Zell Drive and Chateau Way to connect with Alta Laguna Boulevard, according to a city map. With the trolley route, vehicles traveling along Temple Hills Drive bypass Zell and Chateau and connect with Mountain View Drive, according to the city’s website.
“We are looking at the routes and seeing what can be done,” Dupuis said in a follow-up phone call Tuesday.
The neighborhood trolleys run every 30 minutes from 6:30 a.m. to 6 :30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 6:30 a.m. to midnight Fridays; 9 a.m. to midnight Saturdays; and 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays.
The program has generated “positive feedback from the community, especially on the weekends,” the city said in a staff report.
From June 24 through Aug. 21, the city logged 22,500 boardings, or 10 boardings per hour, among the Top of the World, Arch Beach Heights and Bluebird Canyon routes, the report said.
The city will use its fleet of blue trolleys to replace the leased red and green vehicles used during the summer.
Weekend trolleys along South Coast Highway operate from 4 to 11 p.m. Fridays; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturdays; and 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sundays.
Bus service in north and South Laguna will continue as usual. Service times are 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturdays.
For more information about transit and trolleys, visit lagunabeachcity.net.
Twitter: @AldertonBryce
