Amherst Trolley downtown this morning
The quaint new trolley service, where all roads lead to downtown Amherst, starts this weekend with a test run via the Amherst Invitational Ultimate Tournament on Saturday: one trolley
will be running shuttle service between the field locations (ARHS &
UMass) and downtown.
According to Business Improvement Director Alex Krogh-Grabbe, "That will be the beginning of their special event
shuttle service, which we plan to continue through the summer.
Fixed-route loops between the UMass campus and downtown will commence in
the fall, Thursday-Sunday."
No word as to whether they will be serving Rice-a-Roni.
And you to will be able to catch these empty buses all summer long. And next year when the service is a bust, you might be able to pick one up cheap.
ReplyDeleteMy thought is you have to give someone a reason to want to go somewhere. A bus to a beach works, a bus to NYC or a bus to Boston, but a bus to Amherst that neither really has a place to start nor a place to go. Just look at how little the PUTA bus traffic is on a busy day.
Again the business improvement group trying to improve things without trying to improve the actual business. This bus service would be better off taking people from downtown Amherst to Northampton.
Ding DONG! Cheer up, Walt Dis-nay. These trolleys are cheap, look great and are a welcome addition to our dismissively drab downtown. Any improvement here is good for business.
ReplyDeleteI think you and all the other old timers on this blog should take a bus to the beach as you suggest.. and stay there!
Wow! Talk about allergic to success, what a bunch of complainers. Finally, someone is doing something positive and with absolutely no facts you condemn it. Loser.
ReplyDeleteTalk to me in eight months and tell me how great the trolley is.
ReplyDeleteI call 'em as I see 'em. On busy day Amherst foot traffic is dismal at best as Amherst offers nothing more than food and very little else to do. In the summer 'downtown' is more akin to a Texas town in 100 degree heat.
Since Amherst doesn't make a downtown that offers much as it would 'ruin' the fantasy that this town is right out of the 1800s and at any moment Dickinson is going to come into town, a bus to nowhere is cute, but little more.
Call me a curmudgeon. I got a buck on this one.
Last month Wally was hailing all the restaurants in Amherst. This month he is dissing them. I wonder what mood he'll be in next month.
ReplyDeleteWalter, I'd be happy to tell you sometime over a beer all the positive things we're doing to improve the draw of downtown Amherst. Negativity helps nobody. This town has had too much complaining for too long; the BID is trying to change that and help us all feel PROUD of the great things we have going on downtown. I'd love to talk more about it sometime.
ReplyDeleteAlex Krogh-Grabbe
BID Executive Director
alex@amherstdowntown.com
Thank you for your positive contributions, Alex. I appreciate your work and efforts and I wish us all success. (For what that's worth from a CAN.)
ReplyDeleteAlex, if Walter takes you up on that beer, would you invite a cowardly anon? I've been trying to get that guy to go for a boy's night out in the middle of the day for months.
ReplyDeleteGlad to see the property owners taking action rather than just collecting rent.
ReplyDelete