Hansen: Riders pay for free trolleys with headaches

It’s hard to be a Laguna Beach trolley in the summer.

Think about the crowds, the traffic, the expectations.

A number of complaints have been lodged this summer in particular. Ironically, many of them stem from an effort to help, not hurt, the situation.

In trying to streamline the routes and improve pickup times, the city changed the loops: One big coastal loop handles most riders, and a second smaller loop is for the canyon.

But it’s been confusing and frustrating for riders at times.

“Have you tried to use it?” asked Laguna Canyon resident Leanna Doring, who wanted to go from Canyon Acres to a beach in north Laguna. “Last year, I was able to walk out, hop on a bus and go to north Laguna — boom. Not this year.”

Doring said that when trolleys did go by, they displayed “Not in Service” signs and didn’t stop.

“It took us hours. We ended up walking all the way,” she said. “It’s so confusing. People are complaining. Tourists are complaining. They don’t understand. It is definitely frustrating. We just wanted to go to the beach and it was the most difficult thing.”

There’s no simple remedy for free public transportation in Laguna during the summer. It’s certainly not the fault of the long-suffering drivers, who can’t even pull into traffic without facing honks and curses.

And the transit officials say they are doing their best, constantly trying to shift trolleys, avoid lengthy gaps and accommodate necessary driver breaks and lunches.

About the only thing that everyone agrees on is that the popular trolley service is facing perhaps its most challenging summer ever.

“We’re striving to do the best we can,” said Tom Toman, transit manager and deputy director of community services and parking. “Summertime is busy and we’re taking every request, compliment or criticism into consideration. We report on it daily. We know we only have 10 weeks to experiment and be creative. No matter what, we’re moving in the right direction, and I think we have the right goals in mind.”

Like an air traffic controller, Toman is trying to optimize the routes minute by minute. As a Laguna Beach resident, he knows how the traffic patterns work. He knows that when the Pageant of the Masters crowd gets out at 10:30 p.m., he has to be ready with several trolleys.

“We’re constantly reinforcing customer service with our bus drivers and wanting them to kind of buy into this Disneyland type of environment, where they know the landmarks in town,” he said. “They can talk about the festivals and what’s going on. It makes your experience better when the staff smiles as you get on the trolley. We’re trying to do that every day.”

For the tourists and residents, however, they also need to get where they want to go. The expectations this year are higher than ever. Trolleys were added to help reduce the wait time. The routes were extended to the Ritz Carlton in Dana Point and up to El Moro in the north.

And routes were changed.

“The biggest change is definitely our canyon route, which last year we would only have four trolleys total in the canyon,” he said. “This year we added two more, so we have six there, which gives us more coverage.”

The change meant abandoning the downtown bus depot as the main transfer hub and moving it to Coast Highway, just south of Main Beach. Changes were made to public maps to try to reflect the new system, but the maps are sometimes hard to understand.

In an attempt to evaluate the new changes, I rode the trolleys on Monday evening from Woods Cove to downtown, then caught the canyon route to the Act V parking area. It did not go particularly well.

After arriving at Laguna Avenue downtown in fairly short order, I and others had to wait 30 minutes for the canyon trolley. But about 25 minutes into the wait, a coastal trolley arrived and the driver said she was converting to a canyon trolley to help with the overload.

Relieved, a large group of people started getting on the bus, including an 80-something senior citizen who needed some assistance.

No sooner had people started sitting down when the driver apologized and said she was being told by dispatch to stay on the coastal route and everyone had to get off, including the now exasperated elderly woman.

Clearly, it was not a shining transit moment for Laguna.

“We’re getting all this feedback and we’ll see how it goes next year,” Toman said, admitting that my experience did not reflect well on the city. “It’s a trial program to see if it works. I like having blue trolleys on the coastal route and red trolleys in the canyon, simplifying things, but we’ll see.”

Toman said last year saw 700,000 trolley riders, and the coastal route carried almost 500,000 of them. North Laguna had the lowest number of riders and this year is no exception, despite the expansion to El Moro.

The ride south is strong to the Ritz, especially now that the site is the drop-off point for the new Dana Point trolleys.

But another significant challenge is getting the drivers their breaks.

“It adds up when you have like 80 drivers,” Toman said. “They all have to go out of service three times. There needs to be better spacing.”

So when a driver goes on a break, there’s a rendezvous point with another driver. Riders have to get off the trolley and wait for the new driver.

“Let’s see how many strategies we can implement in time and see what works,” he said. “We will build on what’s working.”

Resident Doring hopes they figure it out soon.

“I think it worked a little better the other way that they had it,” she said. “I’ve always found it frustrating, but this year is much worse. Everyone is talking about it.”

Perhaps the service is starting to feel the strain of its success. About 50% of riders now are Laguna residents, so this is no longer just a novel tourist thing.

Like most activities in Laguna, it’s now a year-round issue, which means we need reasonable reliability and confidence.

It’s doubtful given all the issues we have around traffic, parking and circulation bottlenecks that the trolley service will ever be ideal, but let’s at least fix the things that we can fix.

DAVID HANSEN is a writer and Laguna Beach resident. He can be reached at hansen.dave@gmail.com.