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By MATT SCHAFER
Southern Voice, FEB. 29, 2008
If there’s a new way to see Atlanta, Joseph St. Jean will probably find it, bring it to the city, and lead tourists around in it.
Formerly known as “Segway Joe” for his role with Segway Personal Transport tour, St. Jean's unofficial nickname at the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau recently changed to “Trolley Joe,” in light of his new occupation. Last month, St. Jean got his Atlanta Trolley Tour Line up and running. It is Atlanta’s only trolley company to have a fixed route with scheduled stops.
“Everything has been 100 percent positive,” says St. Jean. “No one has said, ‘Oh, it's a horrible idea.’ Everyone, the chamber, the hotels, they’ve all said this is something they’ve needed in the city for the long time.”
After purchasing two used trolleys, St. Jean started running routes on Jan. 15. While ridership has been light, he wanted to do a soft opening to quietly raise awareness and work out the bugs before warmer weather and tourist season hits later this year. He plans a grand opening in late March.
Amanda Dyson Dana, sales manager for the ACVB, says the trolley tour will fill a gap in Atlanta’s mass transit plan.
“I think this is something the city has needed for a long time,” Dana says. “When you look at other major cities like Boston or San Francisco, they all have something similar, and we haven’t had anything like this in Atlanta.”
Tourism is a major economic driver for Atlanta, with 25.7 million visitors coming for vacations in 2006. Without including convention and business travelers, vacationers accounted for $6.2 billion of Atlanta’s 2006 economy.
“There is really nothing that connects all the major attractions and places to visit in the city at all,” St. Jean says. “Even MARTA doesn’t attach them all together, and we’re doing it in a fun, entertaining way.”
THE ENTERTAINMENT COMES in the form of tour guides/trolley drivers. Willie Mae Whitlock, one the first drivers St. Jean hired, waited for her boss to walk out of earshot before saying that, yes, she really does add her own personal history to the tour.
“I try to add in a little of my own experiences,” Whitlock says. “I was here for the Olympics and so I talk about that, add in a few of my own little stories.”
Currently the tour is a 115 minute loop, starting at Centennial Park, heading north to Atlantic Station and south to Grant Park and Turner Field. St. Jean hopes to quickly expand so that trolleys make scheduled stops, and tourists can see sights like the World of Coke at their leisure. Eventually, he would like to expand to tourist draws outside the perimeter as well.
“We’ve arranged stops throughout the city, so if someone wants to go to the zoo they can catch the trolley, get off and catch the next trolley that comes by,” he says.
Taking tourists up 10th Street to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens isn’t only so they can observe Brazilian Cattleya amethystoglossa or the blooming Japanese anise tree.
“The route was very deliberate,” St. Jean says. “Bringing them into the heart of Midtown was important for me.”
Beyond the loop, St. Jean’s trolleys are also available for weddings and chartered events.
“We’ve had a family reunion request,” he says. “If anyone wants to late night party we’ll do that, that’s fine.”
So far most of the business has come from travel sites like Expedia.com and Priceline.com. Local hotels, the Visitors Bureau, and the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce are helping to spread the word as well.
“People are really just starting to see us now, so it's really just starting to catch on,” he says.
With years working for tourism companies in Boston, Key West and Atlanta behind him, St. Jean says he feels an entirely different level of satisfaction working for himself.
“After the first day we actually opened, and we actually had customers on the trolley, I went home that night and I was tired, I was dead, but I was smiling the entire night I was so happy. It was kind of like ‘Oh we actually did it,’” he says. “It was just this total release of this energy, I can’t think of the word to describe it.”
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