By MADDY VITALE
Shopping, dining, the Boardwalk, the beaches and everything in between that makes Ocean City a premier vacation resort may get easier to navigate with the possible return of a shuttle service.
The private Great American Trolley operated in town for many summers before suspending operations in 2020, city spokesman Doug Bergen said Tuesday.
Mayor Jay Gillian is making it a priority to bring back some type of public shuttle service in time for summer.
“We were working to put a system in place when COVID hit, and we’re now looking to put together a pilot program in time for the summer,” Gillian said.
The routes would connect points across the length of the island to the beach, Boardwalk and downtown. The OCNJ app would allow waiting riders to track the location of the shuttles, the mayor said in a statement to the community on Jan. 14.
“We conducted an economic development study in 2019, and visitors identified car-free transportation as one of their top recommendations for Ocean City,” Gillian said.
Bergen noted that the development of a reliable shuttle service was one of the top priorities identified in the 2019 economic development study.
“Nationwide, fewer young people are licensed drivers, and they increasingly depend on ride services,” Bergen explained. “We’re lucky to have so many people in town during the summer, but that leads to one of our biggest challenges: Making it easier to get around town.”
The issues of transportation as well as parking have been brought up by City Council as well.
In December, Third Ward City Councilman Jody Levchuk, co-owner of the Jilly’s shops on the Boardwalk and downtown, proposed that Council give some thought to a parking garage.
“Obviously, traffic is our biggest problem in town, as well as finding parking. When they have these events going on, even during the off-season, parking is an issue,” he told OCNJDaily.com in a December article.
Levchuk wanted to know if it could be feasible to give the city’s visitors more parking, especially during the height of the summer. City officials have said that the population swells to about 150,000 people during the peak of the tourism season.
Specifically, he wanted the city to explore the possibility of building a parking deck or parking garage that could be integrated into the community in a location that wouldn’t be obtrusive.
A special Council committee was formed to study parking and transportation in the city at the Jan. 14 Council meeting. Levchuk is the chairman of the committee and Council President Bob Barr and Councilman Tom Rotondi are the other committee members.
During that same meeting, the mayor said that the city solicited a proposal from a nationally recognized parking consultant to study six potential city-owned sites for a parking garage.
