Kellogg Receives First Trolley Businesses Hope To Draw Silver Mountain Skiers, Tourists To The Shopping District With Free Rides

It’s shiny as a ripe cherry. Big enough to seat 30. Fresh from the factory, it conjures visions of Chicago at the turn of the century.

Kellogg’s new trolley is a cut above anything uptown business owners hoped for in 1990, when they first recognized the need to link the Silver Mountain gondola base to the shopping district.

“All these people were visiting Silver Mountain, but we weren’t getting any of them uptown,” said Larry Stinson, owner of Silver Needle Tees, Textiles and Gifts.

The Alpine Line was founded a year later, when LouLou Kneubuhler donated a 20-passenger airport shuttle bus. Business owners took turns driving the shuttle around town in two-hour shifts. They learned three things.

“Tourists didn’t get on,” said Stinson. “It looked like an airporter bus - which it was - and they didn’t know where the heck it was going.”

Residents were using the service, however.

“Seniors were using it the most,” Stinson said. “Until I drove the bus, I never realized how hard it is for the elderly to get around.”

The last thing the business owners found out, according to Stinson, was that when it came to public transit, they didn’t know beans.

They turned to Aaron Knight, director of North Idaho Community Express.

Under NICE, the service flourished. The agency operates three mini-vans in the Silver Valley, and could use another two. Shoshone County is NICE’s biggest customer of the five northern counties.

But the need for tourist transportation remained. So Knight and local business owners included a solution in their plan to revitalize uptown Kellogg.

New streets, sidewalks, lighting and trees were installed last year. At the same time money for those improvements came through, Kellogg got federal money to improve air quality by reducing the number of single-occupant cars on the road.

That money included $212,000 to buy three trolleys. Uptown businesses came up with another $53,000.

The other two trolleys should arrive before the snow flies, Stinson said. NICE will run the free shuttle. A two-year trial period is written into the budget, Knight said. But as soon as possible, Kellogg businesses will be responsible for supporting the service.

“If they see the economic benefit, they’ll want to support and expand it. I think they will,” said Knight, whose goal is to carry one-fifth of Silver Mountain’s roughly 200,000 annual visitors to Kellogg stores.

During the trolley’s maiden voyage around Kellogg last week, children clamored to get on, said Knight, who was at the wheel. He hopes that’s a sign that tourists may soon do the same.

“We shouldn’t have the problem we had with the airporter,” he said. “People just know that trolleys are for local use.”

Molly Corp., the Maine-based manufacturer of the trolleys, worked long hours to get the first model ready in time for Kellogg’s All-Class Reunion this weekend.

The trolley is equipped with a diesel engine, pollution control devices, a PA system and a hydraulic wheelchair lift. It surpassed everyone’s expectations.

“People who are here for the reunion love the trolley,” Stinson said. “They love the changes to the town. They say they’re going to move here when they retire. I don’t blame them. It’s really coming together.”