Laguna Beach to start up trolleys again in June

Laguna Beach intends to bring its summer trolley service back in late June.

City officials came before the council on Tuesday with the recommendation that the trolley service resume on June 25. It operates along three routes — Coastal, Canyon and Summer Breeze.

The trolley service has been sidelined since March 19, 2020, when the state’s initial stay-at-home order was issued.

In a presentation at the meeting, Deputy Director of Public Works Michael Litschi said that several safety protocols would be implemented in accordance with applicable guidelines.

Among them, face coverings would be required for drivers and passengers, a hand sanitation station would be on each vehicle, and physical distancing would be enforced. That could mean reducing seating to half capacity.

A staff report said that the summer trolley service would end on Labor Day, Sept. 6, and the city would transition to a reduced off-season transit offering.

Litschi addressed reasons why city officials were proposing to bring the trolley service back in the summer.

“The economy is beginning to open up, which likely will lead to more visitors coming to Laguna Beach and needing a form of reliable, environmentally-friendly transportation,” Litschi said with respect to Orange County being projected to move to the red tier.

“The second piece of that is that, obviously, the trolley is a critical component of the city’s parking management plan,” Litschi added.

“Without the trolley service, we wouldn’t be able to open our peripheral parking lots. The trolley service provides free transportation from those peripheral lots outside of downtown to the downtown area, the beaches and art festivals, and really helps accommodate the demand, particularly during the busy summer season, and helps to reduce the parking demand in the downtown area.”

City staff also plan to explore a pilot program in the fall that would replace a neighborhood trolley service that operated hourly.

In October 2019, the city had set a target of 10 people coming aboard per hour by October 2020. The routes upon which the neighborhood trolley operated — Top of the World, Arch Beach Heights and Bluebird Canyon — had fallen short of that goal as of January 2020.

The city now plans to introduce an on-demand neighborhood trolley, an idea the staff report said residents favored after city staff solicited the feedback of residents in February and March of last year.

The on-demand transit service would be accessible via the Laguna Beach Trolley app or by phone. The size of the vehicles expected to be used for the program would accommodate seven to nine passengers.

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