Courtesy of: The Morning News
Tourists are getting off at the end of the Mainstreet as was the plan for the street cars to traverse through downtown. In the past, tourists would stop somewhere in the middle of the down town area and never visit the stores at the top of the street. The government also considers it important for our visitors to visit our historic buildings in the center of the city. With the new street cars or trolleys, this is the best way to connect the route from in front of the Oranjestad wharf, go through the Schelpstraat, all the way up to the end of the Mainstreet, make a turn and return to the starting point passing through the Havenstraat.
As much of the work in the Mainstreet is not completed, nor is the law pertaining to streetcars ready, the possibility has been created for the street car to begin traversing the streets as of Saturday. The streetcar will traverse the streets from 10:00 in the morning to 1:00 in the afternoon.
Anthony Geerman, the street car manager, reported that during the few hours that the street car was running the past two days, he calculated that some 320 persons made use of the service. One half of those who took the ride were locals and the other half were cruise tourists. Many locals use the service either as an outing and to travel from one point to the other, while the tourists use the service to do their shopping and return to the wharf as quickly as possible.
The street car reaches up to Burger King and makes six stops. The last stop is where most of the tourists get off – above Bon Bini Bazaar.
In the planning, Aruba will have four street cars, one will be on reserve. Six street car operators have been certified to operate these vehicles. There will always be one conductor and two officials on board each car. The officials will be the ones to inform passengers where to get off or get on the car, and what stop is approaching.
When all the street cars are in operation, they will run from 7 o’ clock in the morning to 9:00 pm in the evening from Monday to Saturday.
On Sunday the schedule will be from 3:00 pm in the afternoon to 7:00 pm in the evening.
Everyone seems quite excited about this very innovative service for our downtown area.
