Culture Trolleys Crash And Burn Across The City

The culture trolley, unsuccessful in Queens, gets similar results in Brooklyn:

A trolley-styled shuttle bus that was conceived as a way of bringing tourists to Brooklyn’s cultural destinations is actually being mostly used by locals hitching a free ride, a new study has found — yet Borough President Markowitz is about to sink nearly half a million taxpayer dollars into keeping the “disappointing” system going.

Markowitz has allocated $475,000 to buy a new, fuel-efficient fake trolley to run its circular route, despite a report by the Center for the Urban Future that said the service functions mostly as “free transportation to go shopping or save [local residents] a walk across the park.”

Even the executive director of the agency that runs the trolley admits they’re a failure.

“If you talk to the trolley drivers, it’s the same lady and her three kids every Saturday at 3 pm and they’re going from ballet on the west side of the park to something else on the east side of the park,” said Ellen Salpeter, who runs Heart of Brooklyn, the privately and publicly funded community development group that operates the trolley.

. . .

Heart of Brooklyn is not the only local organization feeling let down by its trolley shuttle. The Brooklyn Children’s Museum ran a similar bus from Grand Army Plaza to its Crown Heights center until 2006, when museum leaders concluded that it wasn’t worth it.

Like the Heart of Brooklyn trolley, the museum’s shuttle had turned into a urban station wagon, used by families to travel to the park and nearby shops.

“The greatest benefit seems to have gone to Crown Heights residents who used the trolley to get to Grand Army Plaza and back,” [study author Tara] Colton wrote.