Soon after crews finish painting the Roebling Suspension Bridge this fall, "trolleys" will start motoring a route from Covington through Downtown Cincinnati to Newport and back.
The vehicles will look like trolleys, and will have fun trolley bells. But they won't run on rails like the real trolleys Cincinnati hopes to have in service sometime in 2013. Instead, these trolley buses will roll down streets on ordinary rubber bus tires.
The Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky decided to switch its U-shaped Southbank Shuttle route to trolley buses for a more practical reason than their appearance. They were chosen because TANK needed a bus light enough that it wouldn't violate weight bans on the suspension bridge.
Because of that ban, Southbank Shuttles were detoured onto the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge, adding somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes to routes, and making trips for most riders about twice as long.
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