Reopening Main Street to vehicles.
Another Memphis blogger wrote an article about the CCC meeting here, so I won’t rehash. Go there if you want to read about the meeting.
I think it’s a horrible idea. Want to make Main viable? EXTEND THE TROLLEY HOURS!!!11
What the fuck good is public transport when the bars are open until 3 or 5 am, and the trolley runs to 1am at the very latest? No one uses the trolley because they’re never running when you need them, thus no one ventures far from their home.
A good friend of mine lives on South Main. I’d like to hang out with him more, but my options are:
Take a trolley, crash on his couch, as they won’t be running when I’m ready to go home, unless I go out at 5pm.
Take a trolley, walk home the ~two miles from Main and G.E. Patterson to Main and Gayoso.
Drive, pay for parking, risk a DUI.
None sound appealing, so I never venture that far down.
I realize that there may be slow nights in which the trolley drivers make more money than the fares they collect, but 1. That will rapidly change once people realize they can actually use the trolley, and 2. it’s still cheaper than finding a viable way to reintroduce vehicle traffic to Main.
Do I think this will happen? Of course not, it makes too much sense and doesn’t involve spending money for no reason. Also, it’s the obvious answer, so it will never come to fruition.
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While I do agree with you about extending the hours on the trolley, I have to take one exception here…
Main and GE -> Main and Gayoso is a trivial walk. It’s actually under 1 mile and takes about 10 minutes. I walk that path on a more or less constant basis, and it’s a very easy one. But don’t take my word for it: Google Maps Link
That said, the problem is not so much the hours of the trolley (although that is an issue), it’s the consistency. Sometimes you get 2 trolleys in a few minutes, sometimes you’re sitting there for damn near an hour. They need to get the trolley drivers to stop slacking off at the end of South Main and move those damn things around. Many times I’ve sat at Huling for 30 minutes when suddenly a “Main Only” trolley comes up from the South. Waiting 30 minutes when the end of the line is only 2 blocks away is ridiculous. I think that the trolley drivers don’t really take their jobs very seriously and are impaired by traffic in the first place.
Give the trolleys right of way at the lights, so that the light goes green for them on Main street when a trolley gets close to it, make the drivers stop taking breaks wherever the hell they want, and keep those things moving. I want to see a trolley at every station at least once every 15 minutes. Seriously, it’s doable, if MATA wasn’t run by incompetent morons.
It’s not a bad a bad walk at 8pm, it’s a pain in the ass at 4am, drunk, alone.
And yeah, they definitely need to be on some kind of schedule. I’ve walked from Madison to Gayoso without seeing a trolley, and I’ve also seen two northbound trolleys at the same time between peabody place and gayoso.
I agree, it’s a pretty easy fix. Extend the hours to one hour after Beale closes, at least 4am, and have a trolley every 15 minutes. It would likely become a lot more popular and thus profitable.