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October 31, 2008

'Trolley' to clang in Dalton

Charles Oliver

Dalton residents can get their first glimpse of the city’s new shuttle this weekend.

Downtown Dalton Development Authority executive director Sarah Harrison says the shuttle will be driving shoppers around downtown during the holiday open house today from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The plan is eventually to have a route that takes the shuttle from the hotels off Walnut Avenue to downtown and back at no charge.

“Hopefully, it will be able to start running a route Nov. 6. That’s a tentative target date,” said Margaret Thigpen, Dalton Area Convention and Visitors Bureau (CVB) executive director. But she says that route and the hours of operation haven’t been determined.

“We are trying to not keep anyone on that trolley bus any longer than 30 minutes,” she said. “We have a general idea. We rode that route (Thursday), and it’s going to take a little bit more than the time we want to allot.”

Dalton Mayor David Pennington said a CVB member found the bus on eBay. The city paid $4,950 plus $1,800 to have it brought to Dalton.

Pennington said the plan is to sell advertising on the shuttle to help defray the costs.

“We think the advertising probably will pay for the drivers and the fuel,” he said.

Pennington said there were other uses that he could not discuss at this time.

“It’s confidential. But it would not only more than pay for maintenance and operation of the trolley, it would pay for the trolley itself,” he said.

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