After pouring roughly $16,000 into a marketing campaign to increase ridership of the Red Stick Trolley, the Capital Area Transit System is preparing to do away with the Garden District route.
The CATS board will vote today on whether to eliminate the route, and the recommendation will be forwarded to the Metro Council for final approval.
Jim Brandt, CATS board chairman, says the Red Stick Trolley route has long been plagued with consistently low ridership levels that make it hard to justify the continued use of resources to support it.
“We worked hard to make it a success,” Brandt says. “Unfortunately, it was not.”
The resources dedicated for the trolley route—which costs CATS about $600,000 per year—would be reallocated to more heavily used routes to increase frequency of service for customers, Brandt says.
A public hearing on whether to eliminate the route took place in August, Brandt says, adding that no one spoke against the proposed elimination.
The Red Stick Trolley, previously known as the Garden District Trolley, has been in service since January 2015. As Daily Report previously reported, the route averaged about 14 riders per day of utilized service in 2015 and about 10 riders per day during the first five months of this year.
In February, CATS launched a marketing campaign, that included rebranding the trolley and outreach to businesses along the route, to increase ridership. The campaign failed to attract new riders, and by June the route’s future was in doubt.
Brandt says CATS typically reviews all of its service lines for ridership. “We’ve decided that we’ve done all that we could to make the route a success,” he says.
The CATS board meets at 4:30 p.m. today in the commission room of the BREC Administrative Building, 6201 Florida Blvd.
The board also will vote on whether to extend a contract to Bill Deville, who was tapped by the CATS CEO search committee to succeed former CEO Bob Mirabito.
—Alexandria Burris
