The Memphis Trolly

 Memphis, TN

Donna, "No time for a selfie, must enjoy the trolley ride!"

Ridin' the Rails

Today we drove downtown to ride the Memphis Trolley.  It's weird for me to drive to ride transit but taking the bus downtown from where we are would take FOREVER and we are only have so many years left, so we decided to drive.  Parking was easy (we used our knowledge of the area and parked near where we parked when we went to Old Dominick Distillery.  

We arrived at the trolley station just as one was pulling up.  We jumped on and started the process of buying tickets through the app.  The driver asked us, "what are you trying to do?"  I said I was buying tickets and he said something like, "I could have sold them to you" so I closed the app and mentioned I only had a $20.  He said he didn't have change but that I could have gone into any number of shops in the area and gotten change.  At this point we were holding up the trolley so I asked if we should get off and buy tickets or if we could make the purchase while he drove.  We have done this sort of thing all over the place but he said he couldn't wait for us so we got off.  I purchased our tickets while we waited for the next trolley.  They ran every 12 or so minutes so it wasn't a long wait and it gave me a chance to take photos of the station and surrounding area.

The station has a lift for accessibility but there aren't ticket machines at the stations.

Our Heritage Streetcar (or Trolley) arriving.

The next trolley pulled up so I activated the tickets and got on.  I showed the 2 activated tickets to the driver and he said I needed to show him the tickets so I clicked on one and it didn't work as I had expected it.  The driver and I had an awkward exchange as I tried to explain to him that something was wrong with the app.  You could see the tickets were valid but it wouldn't show him the view he wanted to see so I continued to try.  I tried a few times and finally it worked.  He let us on and our journey started.  I thought to myself that this seems mostly like a touristy ride.  We were half of the riders on our trolley and it was so prone to glitches and checking for tickets was time consuming and costly.  They should just follow Kansas City's model and let people ride for free.  I am sure ridership would increase, people would discover public transit is great and the revenue they would lose from ticket purchases would be nominal from what I can tell.  Oh well.

The Streetcars are bi-directional and have passenger loading on both sides so they don't have to turn around.

It was a nice ride.  The Trolley engine was quite loud for being electric.  We got to listen to the 2 local riders talk to the driver about a southern food place one of them was going to.  We heard all about how a different place made one of the passengers sicker than she knew what.  We rode north for a bit and then got off and walked back.  

I licked this logo on the Memphis City Hall building

There are some great murals in Memphis

The "mural" probably wasn't commissioned. 

There were a few shops on our walk including this record store

This gateway sort of marked the entirely walkable area.  The area we were walking in was closed to traffic so you only had to yield to trollies when you crossed.

Our walk took us passed Beal Street which runs perpendicular to Main Street.

Beal Street is the "Party" area in Memphis.  It's about a block long and allows open containers like Bourbon Street, The French Quarter, The Las Vegas Strip, and Savannah GA.

New construction was happening behind preserved facades

Our walk was nice and we got to see downtown and Beal Street.  Both were VERY walkable but there wasn't a whole lot to walk to.  Donna and I watch a lot of YouTube videos about cities and walkable communities and our taka away was that walkable = win but our experience in Memphis has helped us realize that there is more to it.  Hopefully Memphis can figure out a way to turn things around.  Nashville is thriving and basically has the same climate.  There are a lot of great things in Memphis but there is also a lot of room for improvement.

That's it for today.  If you missed my last post you can find it here.  We visited a disused Monorail.