Howard Gilliam likes driving Joplin’s Sunshine Lamp trolleys.
“I like it, or I wouldn’t be doing it,” he told me with a laugh one morning last week.
“I’m sort of retired. I just do what I want to.”
Gilliam said that he was under a lot of stress at his last job.
“I don’t have any stress here,” the 68-year-old Webb City resident said of his trolley job.
“I like the passengers too,” he said. “You get to know them, and, after a trip or two, and you know where they are going. The riders are just middle-of-the road Joplin residents. Some have a little more money than others, but we are all just folks.”
In the Globe’s Trolley Challenge, five Joplin residents and myself are using the city’s relatively new trolley system as our primary transportation means in September. The riders are sharing their assessments of the service and their experiences with me as we trolley our way through the month.
It’s that kind of friendly feel Terry Hall told me he gets from all of the drivers he’s encountered on his daily trolley trips to class at Missouri Southern.
Hall said the drivers are all friendly, the trolleys are clean and on time.
“I wouldn’t be able to get around without it,” he said. “Some times it’s not that convenient, but that’s part of taking public transportation.”
Hall said he thinks the trolley is a good deal for Joplin residents, but he does think there’s room for improvement. He said that it’s common for riders to sit around talking about how to enhance the trolley experience. “We talk a lot about what would make it better,” he said. “We all want more trolleys running to help cut down on the wait time. Maybe they could run the other way too and cut that time in half. Then they would come every half hour.”
Hall thinks offering a deal on passes to MSSU students and to veterans would be a good gesture.
“Some of us were talking and think students and veterans should get a break on the pass price,” he suggested. “They would be good people to add to the program.”
Ashley Crawford, a 21-year-old Trolley Challenge participant, praises the drivers too. Especially, she said, when it comes to interacting with riders with different physical abilities. All of Joplin’s trolleys are equipped with lifts to aid people in wheelchairs or who have problems with navigating steps with getting onboard. Our riders report that when a rider needs assistance getting aboard the drivers always get up and help out.
“I think those with handicaps get treated well on the trolley,” she explained. “Better than other forms of public transportation I’ve seen. It seems to work well for them.”
Like Hall, Crawford said her ride to work and home from Freeman Hospital is always on time. She’s only had a couple of problems during her September challenge.
“I had a problem one time,” she said. “I was about five minutes late for work. I don’t really blame the trolley, I should have started earlier.”
Then, she laughed, there was the rain. “That’s the only really bad experience. I got caught in the rain. Other than that it’s been great.”
I was soaked on several rainy mornings myself. I’m told that much of the recent $1 million stimulus grant the city of Joplin received will be used to add more covered trolley stops to keep riders dry.
Gilliam was the first trolley driver hired and it’s his white-bearded face that graces the cover of Sunshine Lamp Trolley brochures and promotional material. He’s kind of a trolley poster boy.
Gilliam said he thinks the trolleys are here to stay. “It just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I hope they keep adding on,” he said. “Everybody tells me the same thing. They all want longer hours and for (the trolleys) to go more places.”
I do too.
