Mobile Mayor Spiro Cheriogotis wants Mobile trolley replicas — rubber-tired buses built to look like the electric streetcars that once rolled through the city — to eventually take the place of every vehicle in the municipal transit fleet, a goal he freely admits may never be fully reached but says is worth chasing anyway.
The mayor took his first ride Tuesday aboard the first rubber-tired trolley replica to serve downtown Mobile, and used the occasion to lay out an ambition larger than a single vehicle. Mobile operates more than 30 buses. Cheriogotis wants all of them replaced, over time, with trolley-styled vehicles, with the conversion finished before the end of his first term in 2029.
“I feel like a proud father who is holding his child for the first time,” Cheriogotis said of the new trolley.
Cheriogotis says he is “obsessed” with trolleys — their look, their charm, their nostalgic appeal and their use as public transportation. That enthusiasm is now shaping how Mobile intends to spend transit dollars at the moment the city is rebuilding its bus system from the ground up.
A First Ride and a Bigger Idea
Cheriogotis was specific about what he liked. In his telling, the vehicle is not a bus in costume but a machine better suited to the streets it has to work.
“It’s everything I dreamed of. Unlike the buses, you can lower the windows for those nice days in Mobile. It has the look and feel of a trolley. They are narrower, have a shorter wheelbase and are maneuverable on our streets.”
Those are practical points. Downtown Mobile’s street grid was laid out long before 40-foot transit coaches existed, and the historic districts around it are full of tight corners and on-street parking.
The first vehicle reportedly cost the city roughly $100,000, paid for with money left over from a previous capital budget — a modest sum in transit terms that did not require a new appropriation.
What a Rubber-Tire Trolley Replica Actually Is
The vehicles are conventional buses underneath. A rubber-tire trolley replica is generally built on a standard chassis with a body styled to evoke an early 20th-century electric streetcar: bench seating, brass-toned fittings, arched windows that open. They use ordinary streets and require no track, no overhead wire and no dedicated right of way.
That is the appeal and the criticism in a single sentence. They deliver the visual romance of a streetcar without the enormous capital cost of building one, but they also deliver, functionally, a bus.
Mobile is not first. Montgomery and Tuscaloosa have operated similar vehicles for years in tourist and entertainment districts. In Tuscaloosa, buses designed to look like trolleys have been rolling since 2006 along seven routes and have routinely drawn 350,000 to 400,000 riders a year — a record suggesting the format can move real numbers of people given the right routes.
The Trolleys Arrive Amid a Full System Overhaul
The timing is not incidental. Mobile is in the middle of replacing the Wave Transit System with a new operation called Second Line Transit, with an official start date of Sept. 28. The city has contracted with New York-based Via Transportation, a firm that works with municipalities on route planning and on-demand, app-dispatched service, to run the new system.
Part of that transition involves consolidating fixed routes, which changes what kind of vehicle each route needs. Where a route is shortened or folded into another, a smaller vehicle may be able to do the job a full-size coach was doing before.
Cheriogotis is leaning into the changeover as a branding moment. He has held off on rewrapping the existing buses in Second Line Transit livery, opting instead for temporary decals carrying a preview message: “Second Line Trolley Coming Soon.”
His stated goal is less about the vehicles than about who looks at them. A trolley, the mayor argues, does something a standard bus does not: it makes a non-rider curious.
“I want that person who lives in Mobile or who is visiting Mobile who never thought about utilizing public transit, to see one of those trolleys and say, ‘where is that going?’ I want them to re-evaluate their personal perspective on public transit and see it as a real option for them.”
The Federal Grant That Could Start the Conversion
The first meaningful step toward a larger fleet would come from Washington. The Mobile City Council will vote next week on a resolution allowing city staff to apply for a $1.36 million Federal Transit Administration grant to purchase five trolley-style buses for Second Line Transit’s fixed-route network. If the application succeeds, the grant would require a local match of $320,000.
Federal transit capital grants generally work this way: Washington covers most of the purchase price of qualifying vehicles and the local agency contributes the remainder, commonly around 20 percent. The arrangement lets mid-size systems buy rolling stock they could not otherwise afford, but federal rules then govern procurement, accessibility and what happens to a vehicle afterward.
The five trolley vehicles would replace traditional buses as Via implements the planned route consolidations, rather than adding capacity to the fleet.
A Planner’s Skepticism: ‘Highly Unusual’
Transportation researchers are not uniformly enthusiastic. The broad critique is that trolley replicas solve an image problem rather than a service problem, and that money spent on styling is money not spent on what actually determines whether people ride: frequency, reliability and decent stops. Some specialists argue cities would be better served by improving bus stops, preparing for autonomous vehicles or expanding electric microtransit.
Joel Mendez, a professor in the urban planning program at the University of Kansas who has weighed in on transportation issues nationwide, said the burden is on Mobile to explain what it is buying.
“The city needs to articulate what unique benefits these trolley buses can achieve that standard buses cannot.”
Mendez said he cannot recall an instance of a city replacing its entire conventional bus fleet with trolley replicas, calling it a “highly unusual move.” He allowed that the vehicles may generate genuine interest, but questioned whether that justifies a wholesale swap.
“One can argue that trolley buses bring a certain charm that can initially attract new riders. However, the same effect could be achieved by gradually transitioning to more modern buses as the existing fleet naturally ages out. This would be a more standard, lower-risk approach that could allow a city to avoid a massive upfront investment.”
Cheriogotis’s answer to that is essentially that the gradual approach is the plan. The city is not pursuing an expensive systemwide replacement all at once, he emphasizes; the vision is that aging Wave Transit buses get replaced with trolley replicas as they reach the end of their working lives, funded where possible by grants rather than the general fund.
The Council: Supportive, With Questions About the Bill
Council members appear generally receptive to adding trolley-style vehicles, though several are urging caution about cost and about who the system is ultimately for.
Councilman Cory Penn framed it as a balancing act between riders who depend on transit and riders the city hopes to attract.
“I think having trolleys on wheels in certain areas is a positive. When you think of public transit, most of the people using it, there is a need. We want to make sure we provide that need to the residents. But we can still meet the needs of residents while providing the opportunity for people to enjoy the trolley on wheels.”
Penn suggested the vehicles could draw riders willing to pay a fare for service between downtown Mobile and the University of South Alabama along Old Shell Road — a corridor linking the central business district with midtown neighborhoods and the university’s main campus.
He also asked what happens to the equipment being replaced.
“But at the same time, financially, we want to make sure we do what we’re supposed to do. Can we sell the larger buses? We need a balance to both. We have to provide a resource to the people who need it the most.”
Councilman Ben Reynolds pushed for a wider accounting, arguing the trolley question cannot be evaluated in isolation from everything else the city spends on moving people around.
“We are spending a good chunk of money on transit and I’d be curious what the full transit costs are across all assets, Amtrak, buses and Via and stuff like that. At some point, we can only pay so much and hold so much on a balance sheet for transit. I hope the mayor and the administration have their eye on the ball to value these things holistically.”
The Useful-Life Problem
One constraint on how fast Mobile can swap out its fleet is a federal accounting rule. Vehicles bought with federal transit money carry a minimum useful life. Cheriogotis said the city could face financial penalties if it divests buses before they reach the end of a 12-year federally recognized service life. In general, when a federally funded asset is sold early, the grantee is typically required to return the federal share of its remaining value, which can turn a profitable-looking sale into a net loss.
“The goal is to, over time, divest ourselves of the buses so that it does not negatively impact the funding for transit, does not require the city return funding for the sale of the vehicle. We will be willing to do that in the right case, but the truth is, we have to replace these buses over time with trolleys, identify grants and other opportunities so it doesn’t come from our general operating fund to do that.”
The mayor has signaled he would at least entertain a penalty if the trade were favorable enough.
“If the right circumstance presents itself, I’m not saying we are not willing to do that. If we get federal funding through a grant for five trolleys and it leads us to selling five buses before their useful life, with the bulk of the money going to the federal government, it might be a fair exchange.”
Asked about the 2029 deadline for converting the whole fleet, Cheriogotis was candid about the odds.
“It’s probably pie-in-the-sky. It’s a good benchmark and we’ll keep shooting at it.”
Real Streetcars: Not Off the Table, Not Anytime Soon
Behind the rubber-tire program sits a much larger daydream. Mobile once had streetcars; they disappeared decades ago, as they did in most American cities during the mid-20th century shift to buses and private automobiles. Cheriogotis has floated the idea of bringing rail back, and said he would welcome a modern streetcar system rolling through part of the city if a wealthy benefactor ever emerged willing to fund it.
He is also clear-eyed about the cost. Building a streetcar line means laying track in existing streets, relocating utilities, buying vehicles and, for an electric system, installing overhead wire and a maintenance facility.
“The city is nowhere near having a billion dollars to invest or lay down track and create electric components. It’s not feasible now. In 30 years, who knows?”
What Happens Next
Two dates matter in the near term. The Mobile City Council is scheduled to vote next week on the resolution authorizing the federal grant application for the five trolley-style buses. And Second Line Transit takes over from the Wave Transit System on Sept. 28, when riders will begin seeing consolidated routes, the new brand and, on some buses, decals promising trolleys to come.
Everything beyond that depends on money the city does not yet have. If the grant lands, Mobile gets five trolleys and a template for funding the next batch. If it does not, the conversion slows to whatever pace the general fund and the natural retirement of the existing fleet allow — closer to the incremental path Mendez described than to the mayor’s timeline. Riders with questions about the route changes taking effect Sept. 28 should watch for updated schedule information from the city and Second Line Transit.