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‘Park and ride' starting out slow
By Kristen Inbody of The Montana Standard
Ride the van
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New signage helps spread the word
With an empty passenger log at her side, Katie McGree steered the Experience Butte! van past the few tourists milling around the attractions of Uptown Butte on Wednesday morning.
McGree made
15 scheduled stops on the half-hour loop. No one boarded the van, which is designed to provide free transportation for tourists and locals on the Butte Hill.
Two hours into her shift Wednesday morning, she had given no rides. Again.
"I don't think they know they can do it," McGree said of the tourists. "There's no signs or
anything, so nobody really knows
See RIDE, Back Page
what the heck you're doing."
Until Wednesday, one-inch lettering saying "Experience Butte!" and a route map on the side of the bus are all it carried advertising its purpose.
With a new banner tacked to the side Wednesday afternoon, ridership should increase, said George Everett, the executive director of Main Street Butte. He also plans to add signs at stops.
An average of five or six people ride the bus every day, said Dan McGree of Tucker Transportation.
The Experience Butte! bus made its debut July 5 and will run through Labor Day. It is meant to complement the Old No. 1 trolley, which tours through Uptown Butte, but doesn't allow tourists to hop off, look around at sites and get back on.
"It's been a frustration for a few years," Everett said. "It's been one of the priority things around here to have something to let people get off and walk around."
Trolley conductor Mike Byrnes said he has been handing out brochures and telling his passengers to revisit on the bus the sites the trolley passed.
"It's a fabulous idea," Byrnes said.
Now, visitors to the city can leave their boat-towing RVs at the Berkeley Pit, get on the bus and explore the sites of Uptown Butte for as long they want. When they're done with a spot, they can get back on the bus and head to the next attraction or back to the pit, or wherever they parked.
"The idea is to tie together the attractions to add convenience so people can walk to what they might be visiting," Everett said.
Tucker Transportation is contracted to provide the bus. It runs a 25-passenger bus or a 13-passenger van.
"It's nothing fancy, just a place to sit and ride around. And it's free," Everett said.
"People think there will be a sales pitch once they get on," he said. "There's no strings attached. We're not going to try to get them into a time-share condo or anything like that."
The bus is not a guided tour, Everett said. "It's just meant to be a people mover."
The idea is great, but the bus isn't doing much people-moving, said Rudy Giecek, owner of the Dumas Brothel, which is one of the stops on the route.
"Most tourists visit the pit and get right back on the freeway," Giecek said. The tourists who do find the Dumas love it and ask why it's kept a big secret, he said.
Having a way to get people from the pit into Uptown Butte may stem the loss of tourists, he said. "If it works, it will probably keep tourists in Butte longer as they see all the things there is to do."
Giecek is doing his part to promote the bus service, he said. He tells the tourists and gives out brochures.
He praised the organizations, Main Street Butte, the Urban Revitalization Agency and Imagine Butte, that developed the bus service.
"At least someone is doing something," Giecek said. "So many people want to give up. We can survive this, don't you think?"
The Urban Revitalization Agency is funding the project. Community Development Director Pam Haxby-Cote said the bus costs $185 a day to run, and the board has budgeted up to $11,000 for this summer.
"The board felt that anytime we're able to bring visitors and get Butte citizens to come and see Uptown attractions ... it's good for the Central Business District, the URA district and Butte overall," Haxby-Cote said.
Now that the project is funded, the next hurdle is getting people to use it.
Everett has worked with Uptown tourist attractions to promote the bus service, given information to hotels and gotten businesses to donate radio ads.
At the Berkeley Pit, van driver Melissa Brophy picked up her first passengers Tuesday afternoon, after 90 minutes of driving.
"The pit's the main stop on the tour," she said. "People can find the pit."
Her passengers, Cindy Deutsch and Rick Loftice, live in Anaconda and Livingston seasonally. They were meeting with Deutsch's parents and wanted something to do in Butte for a few hours.
Driving and parking in the streets of Uptown Butte are a deterrent to touring, so when they read a newspaper story about the Experience Butte! bus, they called for more information.
"It was just something to do," Loftice said. "We thought we'd try it."
The pair had never seen the Dumas or the Mai Wah building, the first two stops on the route after the pit pick up. They asked Brophy questions as she drove the circuit, and they admired the historic homes.
"We'll have to go in there some day," Deutsch said when the van stopped at the Arts Chateau Museum.
Deutsch and Loftice got off the bus at the World Museum of Mining, where ticket booth attendant Emily Sorgenfrei has tried to drum up passengers for the bus.
"It's a great idea. It's so much easier on people. They don't have to worry about getting in a hot vehicle," Sorgenfrei said. "We let them know it's free, easy and quick."
Reporter Kristen Inbody may be reached via email at kristenkay28@hotmail.com.
Ride the bus
The Experience Butte! bus runs Tuesday through Sunday 10 a.m. to
5 p.m. It's a half-hour circuit with
15 stops in Uptown Butte between the Berkeley Pit and World Museum of Mining.
It's free.
For details, call Main Street Butte
497-6464.
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