Riders love it, but trolley's not exactly packed

It costs Sarah Cosgrove and other passengers only one dollar to ride the trolley to their destination.

By ED MERRIMAN

Baker City Herald

Sarah Cosgrove rides Baker City’s new public transit trolley bus from her morning swim at the Sam-O Swim Center to her job at the Open Door Christian book store and craft market downtown, to the library, grocery stores, doctor’s offices and other sites around town.

“I love riding the trolley. I think it’s a neat experience,” Cosgrove, 21, said. “It takes you pretty much anywhere you want to go in town for 1 dollar.”

Hayden Steele has been riding the trolley from home to work each morning for about three months.

“This is my first experience with mass transit. I think it’s great. It picks me up right outside my house and it drops me off at work,” Steele said. “It’s comfortable and convenient.”

“At first I just rode it to work, but now I ride it other places besides work — to hair appointments, to the bank and that sort of thing,” Steele said.

She likes the bi-windows, the wooden seats and walls, the brass railings and leather straps for riders who prefer to stand during their ride.

With the regular trolley schedule, Steele said she knows within a few minutes when to walk out the door at the Inland Cafe, where she works, to catch a ride home.

She said the same trip in a cab costs $6.

The trolley runs weekdays from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., starting each morning from the Baker Truck Corral and running west on Campbell Street, with stops near the supermarkets as it loops around Cherry Street, Washington Avenue and Cedar Street before heading down Main Street and a stop in front of the Geiser Grand Hotel.

From there the trolley cruises down Fourth Street to Broadway, down 17th to Campbell, College and D streets before heading north on Highway 30 out to Pocahontas Road and a stop in the parking lot at St. Elizabeth Health Services, where the trolley pauses for three minutes.

The driver then returns downtown along the same route, but with an added loop that takes in a stretch of Second Street near the Oregon Employment Department of Employment office and the federal building/post office. The trolley also cruises down a couple blocks of Myrtle and Auburn, then returns to Main Street for the run back to Campbell and east to the Truck Corral.

The whole route, counting picking up and dropping off passengers, “takes about six or seven minutes short of an hour,” according to John Gaarsland, one of five bus drivers with the Community Connection office in Baker City who alternate between driving the on-call para-transit buses (formerly dial-a-ride) and the trolley.

Gaarsland started driving buses and the trolley for Community Connection after he retired from a 29-year career driving a bread truck for Eddy’s Bread.

He said the average wage for Community Connection bus and trolley drivers is around $10 an hour.

Gaarsland knows the Friday morning trolley riders — Cosgrove, Steele and two passengers who boarded on Myrtle Street — Celine Allen and her five-year-old son Adrian, by their first names.

Allen said she was riding the trolley to the bank and then to Safeway.

“I just started riding it, but I am going to ride it all the time.”

Gaarsland said the trolley costs $1 for each separate ride — if a rider gets off to go shopping or for work, and then wants to ride later, there’s an additional $1 fare.

Mary Jo Carpenter, coordinator of the Baker City Community Connection program, said the trolley is the first true mass transit bus serving Baker City with a regular route.

Carpenter said she has received some complaints from people who question the wisdom of spending tax dollars to buy and run the trolley even though the 26-passenger vehicle is usually closer to empty than to full.

Carpenter said the trolley purchase and operational costs for the first few years have been funded with federal transportation grants, not city or county taxes.

She said the federal grants subsidize the trolley for a few years until ridership picks up enough for it to become self sufficient.

Planning was initiated in 2001 for a trolley to serve a mass transit route in Baker City, due in part to increases in ridership on the old dial-a-ride system.

“Dial-a-ride ridership was increasing to the point we had to turn some riders away,” Carpenter said.

Community Connection, a non-profit serving Baker, Union and Wallowa counties, applied for grants to buy two trolleys — one for La Grande and one for Baker City.

Community Connection received a $50,000 grant for route planning in the 2004-2005 fiscal year, and that was followed by grants to buy the two trolleys.

La Grande was first to get a trolley, in 2006, and Community Connection received about $90,000 in federal grant funds to purchase a trolley for a Baker City route in June 2009, and the trolley was in service in time for Miners Jubilee in mid July, Carpenter said.

She said the trolley actually cost $135,000. The balance above the $90,000 grant came out of the Community Connection budget, she said.

“We had excellent ridership in the summer, but it has dropped off this winter, possibly because of the cold weather and icy conditions,” Carpenter said.

“People were very excited about the trolley and about how it complemented the historic aspect of the community, but just recently we’ve heard concerns that we were wasting resources that could be better used elsewhere,” Carpenter said.

She said it’s important to inform the public that the trolley purchase and operating funds are from federal rural transportation grants.

Nevertheless, Carpenter said the low ridership is disappointing and she’s hoping it will pick up.

“We’d all love to see this trolley running around a little bit fuller,” Carpenter said. “Ridership won’t increase overnight. It will grow over time.”

Community Connection applied for money to buy a trolley, rather than a regular bus, in part to fit in with the downtown historic restoration efforts, Carpenter said.

“Baker in particular has made an effort to make something of its historic district. We felt like we could enhance the historic theme with a trolley, and we received the competitive grant on that basis,” Carpenter said.

Ann Mehaffy, manager of Historic Baker City Inc., said she heard positive comments from tourists and tour groups who rode the trolley during the summer tourist season.

“I love having it here. I’ve ridden it, and it is a wonderful experience,” Mehaffy said. 

Having an old-fashioned trolley is a tourist attraction that adds to the historic feel of the downtown business district, but beyond that, Mehaffy said in her opinion public transportation benefits everyone.

“To me that is a sign a community is maturing,” she said.

Gaarsland said he’d like to see more people riding the trolley.

“I think people will start riding the trolley more once they learn that they can get off to go shopping and catch it again when they get done shopping,” Gaarsland said.

He said he expects ridership to pick up once people realize they don’t need to know where the bus stops are to catch a ride.

“Just wave us down. You don’t have to be at a bus stop. You don’t even have to be at an intersection,” Gaarsland said. “If you are walking down the sidewalk and see the trolley coming, just wave us down and we’ll stop at the first safe spot to pull over,” Gaarsland said.

In addition to the Baker City route, Gaarsland said the trolley connects with the Community Connection inner-city bus service to Haines, North Powder and La Grand.

At the Community Connections transportation hub in La Grande, riders from Baker City can ride a bus route in La Grande to doctor appointments and other appointments, Gaarsland said.

Riders can also catch a Greyhound bus to other destinations from the Greyhound bus ticket in the back of the Baker Truck Corral, or at the transportation hub in La Grand, where Community Connection buses provide transportation to Wallowa, Pendleton and some other area communities.

The inter-city buses leave the Truck Corral at 7:05 a.m. and the return bus leaves La Grande for Baker City at 4:30 p.m.

For Baker County, the overall Community Connection budget is around $1.38 million a year, including a transportation budget of $557,000, Carpenter said.

Other Community Connection programs provide low-income rent, weatherization and home heating assistance. Carpenter said about $470,000 of the budget is for pass through payments to local landlords and electric, gas and home heating and weatherization companies and contractors.