Everyone loves trolleys. Some people actually ride them. But riders never pay close to what the trolleys cost to operate. The latest foolishness comes from Virginia Beach, where city officials are studying what to do with the money-losing trolley system, the VB Wave, that serves the beachfront resort area.
Reports Richard Quinn with the Virginian-Pilot:
Oceanfront leaders say VB Wave – the trolley system run by Hampton Roads Transit – is plagued by aging vehicles, frequent delays and malfunctioning ticketing machines. The useful life of a trolley is considered seven years and 300,000 miles, according to HRT. The fleet in Virginia Beach has an average age of more than 11 years, and each has been driven an average of 276,000 miles.
According to Quinn, Virginia Beach pays HRT about 10 percent of what it costs to operate the 32 trolleys. For fiscal 2006, that was $243,000 — or more than $7,500 per bus. That number doesn’t include state and federal support. Nor does it include the cost of replacing the aging fleet at a cost of $400,000 per vehicle. Faced with mounting costs, city officials are examining their options.
Ridership remains strong, topping 410,000 this summer, so the trolleys appear to be fairly popular. The main beneficiaries, besides the riders themselves, are the merchants in the resort area, the Lynnhaven Mall and assorted campgrounds on General Booth Boulevard. Why can’t an arrangement be made to dun these businesses, either through siphoning off a slice of the existing meal-and-foods tax or imposing a special fee? Remarkably, that was not one of the options mentioned in the article.
The businesses that benefit from the trolleys should help support the system. If they’re not willing to pony up, then one can conclude only that trolley riders don’t constitute an appreciable share of their customer base…. in which case, the system isn’t worth maintaining.