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Jazz Trolley Ranks Best In The City
By Liz Skalka
A new report has found that while most cultural trolleys in the City suffer from low ridership, the Queens Jazz Trail Trolley is one of the most effective in helping to attract visitors to cultural institutions off the beaten path.
The report, titled “A Bumpy Ride,” was conducted by the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank, and is the only major assessment of cultural trolleys ever undertaken.
Cultural trolleys were created to increase the number of visitors to cultural institutions in the outer boroughs.
The study examined cultural trolleys throughout Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx and found that ridership is low due to infrequent service and not enough advertising.
Furthermore, the study found that some routes are primarily used by local residents for a free trip to the subway or supermarket.
The report examined several cultural trolleys in Queens. The Queens Jazz Trail Trolley operated by Flushing Town Hall has proven successful due to its niche market, said Tara Colton, associate research direction at the Center for an Urban Future and author of the report.
“They identified a certain component of Queens history,” Colton said. “They’re not trying to cater to everyone.”
Colton noted how out of the 44 million people that visited the City last year, only a fraction of them visited the outer boroughs.
The Queens Jazz Trail Trolley visits the neighborhoods of jazz legends such as Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald and John Coltrane. It runs each Saturday at 1 p.m. and costs $35.
Established in 2004, the Queens Culture Trolley met with less success, however. It was discontinued in 2005 after it was found that just 32 people rode it on average per weekend, drawing only 2,144 riders in its 17 months in existence.
The trolley made stops at the Queens Museum of Art, the New York Hall of Science, Queens Theatre in the Park, the Queens Zoo, the Queens Botanical Gardens and the Louis Armstrong House.
Colton said the reason the trolley failed was because it stretched itself too thin and because it ran too infrequently.
“If you missed it by a minute or two you could be waiting an hour and a half,” Colton said. “There’s a lot of potential but it was so infrequent it just wasn’t a reliable form of service.”
The trolley made only one loop every 90 minutes; thriving trolleys in Philadelphia and San Diego stop between three and five times per hour at each of their stops, the report stated.
The Heart of Brooklyn trolley service cited in the report runs only once an hour.
The Queens Culture Trolley is still used for special events, however. Queens Theatre in the Park has rented it 42 weekends a year to shuttle people to and from the subway.
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