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Visitors along the waterfront are riding the rails once again, now that Savannah’s River Street trolley is back in operation.
The biodiesel powered streetcar “Dottie” resumed offering free rides from one end of River Street to the other on Thursday after extensive repairs to the wheel base were made and subsequent testing confirmed the improvements were satisfactory, said Veleeta McDonald, Savannah’s mobility and parking services director.
The trolley would likely have been put back into operation sooner but a section of the rails had to be dug up after they were accidently paved over during a road resurfacing project, McDonald said.
On March 31, the streetcar’s body was hoisted onto new steel wheels and axles that had been custom designed by Penn Machine Co. in Pennsylvania, after spending about a year stored away at the Georgia State Railroad Museum on Louisville Road.
The $81,000 overhaul, paid for with parking fee revenues, was needed after the weight of the retrofitted diesel-electric engine put the streetcar out of commission in early 2013. The upgrades were made after the wheels had to be repaired twice.
Almost 60,000 riders rode the streetcar in 2011, the last year it ran for the full 12 months.
A combination of parking fee and lodging tax revenue pays for the maintenance and operations of the free streetcar. Instead of charging riders a 50-cent fare as originally planned, the Mobility Management Board, a nonprofit entity developed by the city and tourism industry, uses hotel-motel tax revenue to reimburse the city based on usage.
