Transit directors to revamp downtown loop, scrap trolley

By KEVIN COURTNEY
Register Staff Writer

The Napa Downtown Trolley died an unceremonious death Wednesday morning.

The Napa County Transportation & Planning Agency’s board of directors voted unanimously to take trolleys off city streets at the end of August. These faux street cars will be replaced by a conventional VINE bus that will shuttle three times an hour between downtown and Napa Premium Outlets.

Thus ends an experiment started in May 2002, when the Napa City Council put up $1 million in gas tax revenues to buy three used motorized trolleys to carry an expected torrent of tourists attracted by Copia.

Copia fizzled while trolley patronage turned out to be more locals than visitors. Trolley rides were always free, with the NCTPA and downtown merchants picking up the tab after the first year.

When fares were imposed last summer for riders boarding outside downtown, ridership tanked. Merchants voted earlier this year to end their annual subsidy of about $60,000.

Only 1,641 people rode the trolley in May, nearly two-thirds fewer than just a few years ago, according to transit agency figures. Trolley rides cost the agency more than $14 per passenger, compared to the VINE’s average cost of around $6 per passenger.

Conventional VINE fares — $1.25 for adults, $1 for youths, 60 cents for seniors — will be charged on the downtown/outlets route. Buses will loop out First Street to the outlet mall, return on Second Street and turn around on Main Street.

Agency members asked staff to consider extending the route to the Oxbow district once the new bridge over the Napa River at First Street is completed.

The three trolleys will be retired at the end of August, but they won’t be sold off ... at least not immediately, Deborah Brunner, the agency’s manager of public transit, said.

The agency may be able to rent out the trolleys for other purposes. Until this business option is explored, NCTPA will put them in storage, Brunner said.

One of the trolleys will be shifted to Yountville in September, temporarily replacing a small vehicle that serves as the Yountville Shuttle, she said. The agency has ordered a new shuttle, but it won’t be delivered until the end of the year.

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