Make trolleys practical

Editor,

As a long-time visitor to Eureka it became quickly obvious that visiting with my wife and 2 kids would be a little expensive.

After filling the car with gas and paying for the motel, we would drive through downtown only to find no parking. Back to the motel and pay $24 for the trolley to down town. So far, we had spent over $175 just to get downtown. That is before doing any shopping or buying lunch or dinner.

We were told that there may be free parking at the top of the hill. We could walk to downtown. Sounded ok until we figured out we would either have to hike back up the hill with our packages and already tired legs or take the $24 trolley. 

We were also told there may be some more parking on South Main. We drove down there and it is a pretty long walk to get to downtown. Not very good options.

Next day we were not interested in spending another $24 to get downtown so we would just stay around the motel pool.

While we understand parking is at a premium, I might suggest lowering the trolley price to maybe $1 per ride to entice not only the visitors to use it but also entice the locals to use it. We did see a lot of empty trolleys around town. A lower trolley price would certainly encourage both visitors and locals to go downtown more often to shop and eat. 

Better use of the excellent trolley system may not eliminate the parking problem but could certainly help to reduce it.

I think these incentives should be considered to make it as easy as possible to go downtown, the backbone of the village. 

Mark Eaton