Englewood Trolley Funding Cut From Budget; Future of Service Uncertain

Englewood’s free trolley service may be on its last wheels.

Citing low ridership, city council chose Wednesday to cut $95,000 from the budget set aside to keep the trolley running after its private funding dries up around midyear.

“I honestly don’t know a single person who uses it,” Councilman Michael Cohen said Wednesday. “I’ve never ever heard of anybody using the trolley. Ever.”

Councilman Eugene Skurnick said he preferred to use the budgeted trolley money for city beautification efforts.

“I’d rather spend the money on more trees, the [Soldier’s] monument, whatever,” he said. “I’m not killing the trolley just to chop money out of the budget. I want to spend money on the important things.”

The trolley, a free busing service created in 2008 to provide transportation to and from commuter bus lines and into the city’s downtown shopping district, has been subsidized in large part by the developers of three South Englewood apartment complexes as part of an arrangement they made with the city prior to building along Route 4.

As developer money has run out, however, the onus for funding operation of the two 31-seat trolleys has fallen on the city.

Manager Timothy Dacey said it would cost the city $95,000 to keep the trolley running from July 1 through the remainder of the year and roughly $200,000 annually thereafter. The free service generates less than $3,000 in voluntary rider contributions for the city each year.

The Englewood Economic Development Corporation, a private organization that funds various downtown business initiatives and had been floated as a potential financer of the trolley, will not use its funds to support the service, EEDC chairman Adam Brown said.

Until January, the EEDC had acted as a conduit for trolley money passed from the Route 4 developers to the city, but never had any intention of contributing organization funds to prop up the service, Brown said.

“When the trolley program began in 2008, the city apparently envisioned that the trolley would receive sufficient capital contributions from South Englewood developers to subsidize the system going forward,” Brown wrote in a Jan. 16 letter to Dacey informing him that the EEDC would not fund the trolley. “We are at a loss to understand how the City expected that a trolley system that generated little operating income could be maintained indefinitely with upfront capital contributions being the only source of income.”

With the city and EEDC bowing out of the trolley game, the fate of the service rests with the Englewood Board of Education, which became party to the discussion after an unscientific ridership study found that students riding to and from school comprised a majority of the service’s users.

Board president Stephen Brown said the district isn’t willing to fit the entire trolley bill, but would be amenable to a discussion of sharing costs with the city.

“We want to be able to serve our students and if we can make it happen from a financial standpoint then the board will be very inclined to do it,” he said Friday.

At issue, Brown said, are the operation’s cost and the legality of spending district funds on a public transportation project that is not of exclusive benefit to students.

“We have to do our analysis to figure out if it’s worthwhile,” Brown said. “We know students use it, but it’s the legal issues and the safety issues around having the public and students on it together.”

Brown said Dacey met with schools superintendent Donald Carlisle on Friday and that discussions between the city and the district should continue over the next couple weeks. He expects the board to take up the trolley issue at its regular meeting later this month.

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