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06/16/2020 04:30 PMThe rides will go on. As life slowly begins to trend toward normal, organizers announced that the free-to-ride Clinton trolley will begin its second season on Thursday, June 25 and run until Sept. 5.
The trolley is a joint venture between the Placemakers, the Clinton Chamber of Commerce, and the Economic Development Commission (EDC). The trolley is operated by 9 Town Transit.
There will be several new wrinkles for riders this summer, according to EDC member Phil Sengle. For one, masks will be required and the trolley will be limited to 18 passengers using staggered seating to maintain social distancing. The driver area will be blocked off and the vehicle will be disinfected every day.
This year people can catch rides to the Clinton Crossing Outlets near the Henry Carter Hull Library, the marina and town dock area, the train station, and on Main Street near Liberty Green, the Stop & Shop Plaza, the town’s eastern border with Westbrook, and at Safe Harbor Pilot’s Point Marina in Westbrook. The stops will also be repeated in the reverse order. The complete trip will take about an hour in each direction. Maps will be available at each stop.
The trolley will run weekly from 5 to 9 p.m. on Thursdays and Fridays and from noon to 9 p.m. on Saturdays. Due to low ridership levels, organizers removed Sunday trips from the schedule for this season.
Paul Orsini, the executive director of the Clinton Chamber of Commerce, said the trolley found success in dealing with the marina patrons last year, and the organizers hope to expand on that success this year.
“We want to focus a lot on marinas. We found that once people got over the ‘Let’s go on the trolley’ phase, it was marina people who were using it,” said Orsini.
The Clinton and Westbrook marinas are popular boating destinations for visiting boters. By now offering a free ride to Clinton’s retail and restaurant hubs, the organizers are hopeful that boaters will spend their time and money in Clinton’s businesses. Orsini said the marinas will make it known to visitors that the trolley service exists.
The trolley debuted in summer 2019 to serve two purposes: to encourage people to visit different parts of town in a fun manner and to attract more visitors to Clinton. Orsini said that the goal of the trolley isn’t to make a profit, but to pay for itself. While there is no charge to ride the trolley, donations were solicited from from advertisers to cover the cost of decorating the trolley, as well as to pay for the driver and gas.
The trolley itself was a gift from Douglas Dobriner, one of the owners of the property at 30 Old Post Road. That property had been the location of an extremely controversial proposal to put an industrial waste recycling facility in town. The plan has since been scrapped.
The idea of bringing a trolley to town is something the EDC had been kicking around for a while, and when Dobriner learned about the EDC’s plans he offered to donate a trolley he had in his possession to 9 Town Transit.
News of the source of the trolley’s donation sparked concern from some members of the public, but organizers have said that everything about the donation was above-board and that the controversial application had already been pulled when the donation was made. The EDC has no authority to approve or deny applications from property owners.
As of April, it has been unclear if the trolley would be back in Clinton this summer. Many of the advertisers needed to raise the $16,000 required to run the trolley are local restaurants who have been hit particularly hard by the shutdown. As the state began to reopen, Orsini said that the organizers were able to see a way to bring the trolley back. The group was able to secure the needed advertising dollars and that with the new safety measures in place the trolley was given the green light.
“We were determined to get this thing going again,” said Sengle.
Sengle said that having the trolley running again this summer was important because it would be harder to restart it again next summer if the town missed a year.
“We’re trying to show we’re still here and the restaurants are open again,” said Orsini