After seven years of City Hall wheel-spinning, is it time for a trolley?

Salvatore Marchese, executive director of the Downtown Association, will meet Thursday with Tom Vair, the city's deputy chief administrative officer for community development and enterprise services, to discuss running a trolley from the new transit terminal at 111 Huron St.

Vair was supposed to be at a Wednesday-night meeting of the Downtown Association board, but was unable to attend.

Instead, he and other stakeholders will meet Thursday with Marchese and Paul Mason, a member of the Downtown Association board and a trolley enthusiast.

"This trolley has been before City Council for seven years now. It was first introduced in 2013. The first formal thing was 2014."

"It's 2021," Mason says.

"I want to find out why it's taking seven years to get anything done about this. There's a major need for this service."

According to Mason, the biggest problem with the Sault's downtown is its length.

He undertook a recent walking tour of the new downtown murals.

"To see all the murals from Pim Street to Huron is 2.5 kilometres. That's a long distance to cover."

"People complain about lack of parking. We know that's not true. There's tons of parking."

To encourage people to come downtown, Mason says, we need to make it easy for them to get around there instead of driving between blocks.

"It's been seven years and nothing's happened yet."

Mason says he's aware of no official updates on the trolley project.

"The only information I find is on SooToday."

"I know the discussions are still being held with the city, regarding the trolley," another board member, Kelly Walker, said Wednesday night.

"I know it's definitely still in discussions and something that they're looking at moving forward with."

"With the movement of the bus terminal, wouldn't that be a good time to design a trolley into the new bus terminal, to supply the downtown core?" asked Frank Gaccione, another board member.

"Personally, I think we want to avoid delaying this any more. We need a shuttle bus," responded Mason.

"The discussion has been had about integrating it into the bus system," Walker said.

"Of course, it's all about expense. They're also discussing putting it to tender."

Vair will be asked to attend next month's Downtown Association meeting to talk about the trolley.

Trolleys ran up and down Queen Street from 1902 until 1941.

Sault Ste. Marie's trolley era ended in when the trolley barn on Huron Street burned in 1942.