A couple of local would-be entrepreneurs have proposed bringing a free shuttle service to downtown Winston-Salem – delivered via golf carts. As some cartoon character might reply, “It’s so crazy, it just might work.”
Reid and Kirsten Hensley came up with the idea of starting a golf-cart shuttle business and took their idea to City Council Member James Taylor, who found the idea worthy enough to take to the city council’s public safety committee meeting on May 12, the Journal’s Wesley Young reported recently. It’s now under consideration.
The Hensleys were inspired by such operations in other cities – touristy places like Nashville and Denver – and they were also inspired by our downtown area, where they say they met and fell in love, with each other and with downtown.
Essentially, the carts would putter along around 20 miles per hour, following all the standard traffic laws, picking passengers up at one point and dropping them off at another, providing a special experience in our unique downtown. Fourth Street to the arts district might be a popular route – or Fourth Street to the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter.
The Hensleys would offer the lifts for free, making money off advertisements on the carts. They would start out modestly, they say, with one golf cart, and see how things went. That’s a smart way to do it.
And this idea would fit in with our blossoming downtown.
Winston-Salem’s downtown Fourth Street recently received a well-deserved “Great Main Street” designation from the N.C. Chapter of the American Planning Association. The association took into account the history, mixed uses and vibrancy of Fourth Street, which is certainly vibrant and alive on weekends, and many weeknights.
“This award is really about the transformation of Fourth Street and the purposeful investment in that part of downtown over the years to truly make it a center of the city,” Kelly Bennett, a planner in the city’s planning division told the Journal.
That’s certainly worth a golf-cart ride.
Certainly there will be aspects of golf-cart shuttles that the city will want to get right. There are safety concerns, and steps will have to be taken to keep from delivering people who have had too much to drink to their cars. Kirsten Hensley said that such a problem can be avoided the same way a bartender avoids it, by refusing service to people who have had too much.
Some alternate forms of transportation are already taking advantage of our downtown and its potential for tourism: Triad ECO Adventures and Revolution Gliding Tours offer guided Segway tours that include some of the old and newly developed areas of downtown. The Camel City Carriage Co. operates a horse-drawn carriage down Fourth Street on weekends.
Now all we need is a hay wagon.
We know the idea of golf-cart shuttles will sound nutty to some – but why not? Let’s give it a go. We like that the Hensleys are thinking innovatively. That certainly fits in with the spirit of our city.