Mall trolley service delayed until 2015
UNIVERSITY PARK -- A trolley bus service planned to ferry Mall at University Town Center shoppers to nearby retail centers and residential neighborhoods will debut in the new year, giving its operators a few months to get it to work smoothly with mall traffic.
The service, funded by mall development partners Benderson Development Co. and Taubman Centers, is not starting on the mall's opening day, as originally planned. But the buses will make dry runs through the end of the year to perfect their routes.
The trolley will begin after customers get acquainted with the new shopping opportunities, roads and parking available at UTC, said Benderson's development director, Todd Mathes. Trolley drivers also need to get familiar with moving people around the University Park area.
"When we implement it, we want to be sure we hit the pickups so everyone who uses it wants to use it again," Mathes said.
Benderson and mall development partner Taubman Centers plan to pay for the trolley service, spending about $3 million to get it started and $250,000 annually to keep it running. Under the trolley program, free buses will serve four main routes, along with two branch routes that could pick up shoppers from Lakewood Ranch, The Fresh Market and as far away as Fruitville Road in Sarasota. The routes will circulate riders between several Benderson shopping properties on University Parkway and two nearby neighborhoods.
The planned routes, covering at least a dozen square miles, include:
UTC: Serving the Mall at UTC, Nathan Benderson Park and SuperTarget
Cooper Creek: Two routes, clockwise and counter-clockwise, linking Shoppes at Cooper Creek, offices, Benderson headquarters and hotels with the Mall at UTC
Lakewood Ranch: Connecting to Lakewood Ranch Medical Center with UTC
The Meadows: Connecting The Meadows residential area to UTC
Fruitville: Connecting Osprey Commerce Center, Sarasota Commerce Center II and University of Phoenix campus to UTC
The delay may not have a great impact in some proposed destinations. Stacy Tocci, a 10-year Lakewood Ranch resident, said that while she believes mass transit could help relieve the traffic congestion expected around the mall, she doesn't think it will take many personal vehicles in surrounding communities off the road.
"The question is how many people would actually use it," she said.
The trolley bus isn't the only transit system approaching the mall opening with a wait-and-see attitude. Sarasota County Area Transit announced that it will detour its buses around the mall during its opening and perhaps for the entire year-end shopping season to avoid congestion. One route that will be avoiding mall traffic, Route 30, was specifically commissioned earlier this year to take passengers to and from the mall area.
The detours started last week.
Buses serving routes 30 and 15 will not travel between DeSoto Road and University Parkway on North Cattlemen Road, Sarasota County spokesman Jason Bartolone said. They will drop mall-bound passengers at a SCAT transit station located near the Florida Blue Center at 285 N. Cattlemen Road. SCAT's 215 S Sunday Route will also drop passengers at alternative stops to avoid mall congestion.
"We want to serve all the passengers who are going to use SCAT as best we can," he said. "We also don't want to contribute to any additional traffic problems."
Two SCAT stops on University Parkway will be temporarily closed. Two temporary stops will be opened on Honore Avenue.
For its part, Manatee County Area Transit has plans to expand its Route 6 to offer more service to Lakewood Ranch, though not along University Parkway. The route, which now starts on Coquina Beach, would extend from DeSoto Square to Fifth Street West and then along State Road 70 to Lakewood Ranch Boulevard. It would be MCAT's first route that travels east of Interstate 75 into Lakewood Ranch.
Matt M. Johnson, Herald business reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7027, or on Twitter@MattAtBradenton.
This story was originally published October 12, 2014 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Mall trolley service delayed until 2015 ."