Getting out of the office at lunch time and visiting downtown retail shops and restaurants isn’t always convenient when the weather is too hot or too cold, or the distance too great, or in less-than-comfortable office attire.To help downtown employees get out despite the midday heat in Tempe, AZ, the Downtown Tempe Authority launched a free lunchtime trolley in the summer of 2014.
“We wanted to do something to get people out of the office in the middle of the summer,” says Kate Borders, the Authority’s president and executive director. “People just didn’t want to walk three or four blocks when it was 120 degrees outside.”
The organization intended to offer the trolley for just three or four months. “But the businesses all responded well, and we were seeing anywhere from 750 to 900 riders a month, even though the trolley was only running for three hours a day on weekdays.”
The service has since been extended and is currently departing every twenty minutes from eight downtown locations.
The full article appeared in our print edition. To always get the full story, read Downtown Idea Exchange.