This past weekend marked the return of the Loop Trolley, a means of conveyance that prior to this Saturday I knew only by its reputation as a boondoggle and by the one time many years ago when I fell off my bike after my tire lodged in its track. But when I heard the trolley would again start running this past Thursday, the part of my parental brain that thinks like a cruise director took notice. My two-year-old is obsessed with Daniel Tiger—a PBS show didactic even by the standards of children’s programming and, crucially, one that features a trolley. The boy really loves that trolley. Therefore, we were going to ride the one in the Loop. It would be disrespectful to Joe Edwards’ hubris and the finer points of federal transit dollar clawbacks to do anything else.
Of course, getting on this piece of public transit necessitated a 20-minute drive from South City to University City. During that time, I wondered who else would be hopping on and off as the trolley goes from the U. City Public Library to the Missouri History Museum and back.
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The answer: People like me, who are not trying to get anywhere.
The conductor told us Saturday that about 400 people had ridden the Loop trolley in its first two days back. That tracks. There were no more than 20 people who opted to get on throughout our hour-long, 4.4-mile round trip, about two-thirds of them with a kid or grandkid doing exactly what we were doing: riding it end to end because it exists and kids love trains and trolleys. The other riders included two actual commuters, an old-timey transit enthusiast and his wife, and two bemused people I am pretty sure were from out of town.
As a public works project, the Loop trolley is rightly derided as a $51 million mistake. As an entry in that all-important category of “an easy thing you can do” with young kids, I’ve got to say: the Loop Trolley kind of kicks ass. The kids can roam freely, climb the seats, and launch themselves off said seats. The lackluster ridership means there is plenty of room. Remember that when these little people ride in cars they are straightjacketed into car seats. So of course the trolley is a revelation. Enough windows are open to give the car a breezy, al fresco vibe. The Metro employees operating it are all way chiller on the trolley than Metrolink trains. They mostly just seemed happy that anyone was there at all.
There is also a very specific pleasure in watching your child press his face against the window, grinning like he’s in a parade, while adults on the sidewalk and in nearby cars do a double take with visible confusion as they process why the trolley whose demise they read about years ago is trundling toward them like a municipal ghost.
“It doesn’t go anywhere,” one grandmother told me cheerfully, riding with her granddaughter. She compared it to a cut-rate version of the Polar Express train ride, which feels about right.
And just like that holiday ride, the trolley also comes with a touch of urban grit. One of the actual commuters taking the train from the library to the Delmar Metro station took issue with the conductor asking him to be careful with his to-go box of Seoul Taco.
“You didn’t say that to anyone else!” he shouted. “That’s racist. I’m sick of this shit!”
By the time he got off, though, he and the conductor had made up. “Have a nice day, baby,” she called after him.
“Now you do the same,” he said.
Unlike most of the other riders, though, he was not invited to take a photo in the driver’s seat.
The Loop trolley runs Thursdays through Sundays, 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., now through October 25. Ridership is free.
