Politics & Government
Trolleys Prompt Special Havre de Grace City Council Meeting
The city's new trolley service sparked a special meeting of the Havre de Grace City Council.
![Electric trolleys will be branded with a logo that says "The Tide," which is the name of the new trolley service that will take visitors around Havre de Grace.](https://patch.com/img/cdn20/users/57041/20220520/061234/styles/patch_image/public/51696bed-ef78-4547-b8fd-4805801999f3___20061211861.jpg)
HAVRE DE GRACE MD — A special meeting of the Havre de Grace City Council is set for May 23 to discuss the new trolley service. Lawmakers will consider a resolution to prevent the state from being held responsible in the event of any liability
Called The Tide, the electric trolley service is designed to take visitors around the city.
Havre de Grace has four trolleys and will run two to four of them on weekends based on volume, according to Bambi Johnson, chief of parks, events and recreation for the city.
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The Tide will run from Tydings Park to the Lock House and back, Johnson told Havre de Grace Patch.
"It will hit all the large parking areas," including the old Havre de Grace High School campus (now known as the STAR Centre), David Craig Park, Veterans Park, the parking lot between MacGregor's and the American Legion, Water Street and the marinas, Johnson said.
Find out what's happening in Havre de Gracewith free, real-time updates from Patch.
The Tide will run from 5 to 10 p.m. on Fridays; 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on Saturdays; and noon to 7 p.m. on Sundays.
"We are awaiting the tags from the state of Maryland," Johnson told Havre de Grace Patch on Friday, May 20. Hopefully, she said, they could begin running as early as next weekend.
The Maryland Department of Transportation Motor Vehicle Administration will not release the license plates to the city until it makes official that it will hold harmless and indemnify the MDOT MVA for any and all liability resulting from the use of the overweight low-speed vehicles, according to city officials.
Mayor William Martin and the Havre de Grace City Council will convene a special meeting at 6 p.m. on Monday, May 23, at City Hall to discuss a resolution related to the trolley.
Essentially, the resolution authorizes the mayor to indemnify MDOT MDVA from liability related to the trolleys. The public can attend at City Hall at 711 Pennington Avenue or watch live on the Havre de Grace YouTube channel. See the agenda packet.
The city has been working since 2017 to bring the trolley service to fruition, according to Adam Rybczynski, a spokesperson for Havre de Grace government.
“The City of Havre de Grace is a tourist and arts and entertainment destination inundated frequently with a high volume of visitors,” Martin said in a recent statement. "We recognized that we needed a method of safely mobilizing visitors around our City, and we knew our citizens would expect us to find an ecologically sound solution. I believe that The Tide will do just that while also complementing the wide range of tourism and environmental stewardship policies we have put into place.”
Related: New Trolley Service To Begin In Havre de Grace This May
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