Visitors’ Bureau to Take Over Trolley
Ventura’s tourist trolley, pulled from the streets last fall amid declining advertising revenue, will resume its treks between the downtown and the pier and harbor by Memorial Day.
City leaders agreed Monday to pass over financial responsibility for the deficit-ridden trolley to the city’s visitors’ bureau.
For the third time since the trolley began running in 1996, officials cut the service in September. With an annual operating cost of $60,000, just $33,000 in trolley-side advertising revenue had been sold. The rides are free.
The Ventura Visitors and Convention Bureau, however, has decided that the trolley is essential to tourism.
The bureau has committed to using some or all of a planned 10% increase in the bureau’s budget from the city to finance the project.
The City Council bought the trolley in the spring of 1996 for $96,245. Eighty percent of the money came from a federal transportation grant.
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