Riders, not city, shun trolley

Lauderdale decides to keep publicly funded tram despite big deficit

Ridership is dropping, and the redand-yellow Sun Trolley system faces a multimillion-dollar budget hole.

But it’s not the end for the 25-year-old Sun Trolley community bus operation in Fort Lauderdale. City officials on Tuesday night endorsed the Sun Trolley’s continued existence, despite its troubles.

“It’s not a pretty picture,” said Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Romney Rogers, who sits on the board of the nonprofit Transportation Management Association., operator of the trolley system.

By a 4-1 vote, Commissioner Dean Trantalis dissenting, city commissioners Tuesday embraced a Transit Master Plan that spells out potential improvements and changes to the Sun Trolley, including charging fares on some of the free routes, and replacing the current hail-a-ride system with fixed bus stops.

The plan forecasts a $46.4 million

budget gap in the next 10 years — or $62 million including major capital expenses. In the coming budget year, the system is expected to face a $475,813 hole in its budget, according to the report by consultant Tindale Oliver.

“Why in God’s name could you possibly be asking us to support something like that, that’s going to suffer such a huge deficit?” Trantalis asked the city manager.

City Manager Lee Feldman said the plan is just a “road map” that could be followed if more transportation grants and funding come in. The county, for example, has talked about gaining voter approval for a sales tax increase to pay for transportation improvements. A ballot question to that effect failed in 2016.

The trolleys are expected to become even more important in Fort Lauderdale when The Wave streetcar system opens by 2022, helping it meet its ridership goals by delivering riders from surrounding neighborhoods.

Running eight routes and one water ferry, the Sun Trolley runs every day from about 6:20 a.m. to 11 p.m., serving up to 30,000 riders a day. It mainly helps riders get to or from the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods, and to the beaches.

Though the 10-year plan proposes expanding routes and making costly changes like adding permanent trolley stops, Fort Lauderdale Commissioner Bruce Roberts said the trolley system will need to make cuts — eliminating the Galt Ocean Mile route, for example — and bring in money from new sources, in order to survive.

“It’s going to be a work in progress,” said Roberts, also on the TMA board.

“There is a real danger of the TMA going out of business unless it’s further subsidized,” Rogers said. “It is a service to the community, and public transportation does not pay for itself.”

The city is a major financial backer of the system. So is Broward County.

Fort Lauderdale is also served by mass transit county buses, Tri-Rail trains on the CSX tracks west of Interstate 95, and will soon have Brightline trains carrying passengers from downtown Fort Lauderdale to Miami and West Palm Beach, on the FEC tracks that run through the downtown.

The trolley is supposed to reach farther into the community, acting “like the veins feeding the larger transportation arteries,” TMA Executive Director Robyn Chiarelli said.

Some residents of northwest Fort Lauderdale said the Sun Trolley shouldn’t impose a fare, and should expand its routes in their community. Commissioner Robert McKinzie vowed that no fare — not even the 25 cents recommended on currently free routes — would be charged on the northwest route, whose riders may have low incomes.

Greg Stuart, head of the transportation-focused Metropolitan Planning Organization, said the trolleys connect “socioeconomic disadvantaged neighborhoods to jobs, health care and shopping,” provide an alternative for tourists, and reduce downtown congestion.

Despite its popularity in some neighborhoods, overall January-June ridership on the trolleys dropped 45 percent from 2014 to 2017, according to the latest data from Broward County Transit.

Chiarelli noted that drops in mass transit systems nationwide have experienced reduced ridership, attributed to a variety of trends, including lower gas prices and more people working from home. She said the aging trolleys also were part of the problem. Ten new trolleys are scheduled to be purchased this budget year, but for now, new trolleys are being leased.