Starting this semester, students who request late night busing will no longer see the Trolley running on campus.
Lee Walker, owner of the Oswego D Bus, recently announced that he bought the Trolley from Allen Chase Enterprises.
The announcement came during a post on Facebook back in January. Walker said Chase contacted him about the sale of the Great Lakes Trolley and, after some thought, Walker decided buying the Trolley would only expand his business throughout the community. The company now owns eight buses and three trolleys.
Walker started his business back in 2003 and has been operating the buses for 12 years. The buses, which are primarily seen on the Oswego State campus from Thursday to Saturday nights are intended to help transport students to and from parties and the bars. Besides transporting students, the buses are also used for wine tours, concerts and weddings, among other things. The trolley, which was also used to transport students to and from parties and the bars, will no longer be used on campus.
The decision comes months after community members voiced their concerns over the noise that came from the D Bus and trolleys that entered residential neighborhoods.
During last semester, residents throughout the community expressed their annoyance of the noise produced by both the trolley and the D Bus to Councilman Francis Enwright. Enwright’s initial proposal was to restrict the buses during their weekly runs. This meant that they wouldn’t be able to run from the campus to Cayuga Street between 9 p.m. and 4 a.m. However, towards the end of last semester, Enwright and both bus services looked to have reached a compromise of sticking to main and commercial streets only.
For Walker and his company, no longer using the trolley on campus would help ease some of the tension between the community and their company. They decided to continue to run the D Bus service because the buses are newer models and have quiet engines.
“[The] local community has complained about the noise of the trolleys and we want to accommodate the community by controlling how many buses run,” Walker said.
Some students are disheartened by the news of the buy-out of the trolley and upset that it will no longer be running on campus.
“Honestly, it kind of makes me feel disappointed because I actually looked forward to getting onto the Trolley verses the D Bus because the D Bus is a lot smaller, so they would always cram kids into the D Bus and it would be really tight,” Freshman Danielle Walker said. “The Trolley was a lot nicer.”
Walker also said that the people who ran the trolley were a lot nicer.
However, for others, the idea of the trolley no longer running on campus doesn’t change a whole lot for them.
“I don’t feel much different about it,” Junior Nicole Fudrini said. “I never really took the bus often, I just walked everywhere.”
Lee Walker said that the trolleys will still be used for other events, such as weddings and wine tours.
