YACHATS — Efforts to bring a tourist-style trolley to Yachats have run into a snag after Travel Oregon announced Thursday that while the Yachats Area Chamber of Commerce received the $100,000 grant it sought the city did not.
Each had applied for $100,000 grants under Travel Oregon’s accessible and inclusive program to help purchase a 14-passenger $230,000 hybrid gas-electric trolley to use during tourist season. It would provide free round-trip service from Tillicum Beach Motel to Cape Perpetua with off-highway stops at points in between.
The trolley is the brainchild of the Yachats Area Chamber of Commerce and is intended to help ease congestion and parking in downtown Yachats while also offering a fun and easy way for tourists and locals to move around town and hitch rides from hotels, motels, trails, beaches and homes. It would also provide reservation pickups for people with mobility issues.
A clear majority of locals and tourists are on board with bringing a trolley to town based on an online survey in August that had more than 322 respondents, as well as at a public meeting hosted by the chamber.
Chamber executive director Bobbi Price said she spoke with Travel Oregon after learning the chamber had received the grant to ask why the city had not.
“They said it was because the city is not a tourism-facing entity and this is a tourism-facing project,” Price said. “So right now we are just going back to the drawing board is the next step, figuring out where that additional money can come from, whether it be fundraisers, other grants we can seek, private donations, sponsorships, just start thinking about other ways to fund the project.
Travel Oregon awarded $3.6 million to 56 organizations to help pay for “accessible and inclusive tourism projects across the state.” Organizations on the Oregon coast received more than $1 million of those grants.
— Garret Jaros/YachatsNews
I hope this never happens – it is a step toward making Yachats into a theme park.
I agree.
1. Do we really need a Disneyland-style trolley impacting 101 traffic through Yachats and further to Cape Perpetua? Is this the first step towards turning our already tourist and resident-friendly village into a resort destination with over-commercialized, high-end shopping?
2. Such an amount of money would be better spent on safe construction of more pedestrian pavements and crosswalks along 101, and more access to public restrooms.
3. Also, any kind of trolley service should be nothing less than an eco-efficient all-electric vehicle.
Nobody I have talked to is in favor of this project, rather overwhelmingly the opposite.