Two years ago, Scott Dario shook up the Island sightseeing business when he bought four modern tour buses, festooned with whimsical caricatures, to replace the rickety school buses that had ferried and jostled visitors around the Island for 25 years. Now Mr. Dario, owner of Martha’s Vineyard Sightseeing, has come up with a new idea. He plans to add three new, vintage-style trolley cars to his fleet.
If the effusive response of the Oak Bluffs selectmen at their last meeting is any barometer of his future success, Mr. Dario has a bright summer ahead.
“I’m thrilled with this idea,” selectman Kathy Burton said. “I’ve been hoping for this for ages. It’s so appropriate for the town.”
“We love the idea,” selectman Walter Vail said. “I think they’ll look great on Circuit Avenue this summer.”
“This is fun,” selectman Gail Barmakian said. “We’ve all been wanting something like this for a long time.”
“I’m an Oak Bluffs kid, and I wanted to do something with Oak Bluffs character,” Mr. Dario told the selectmen. “There’s a lot of pride here.”
In a conversation with The Times, Mr. Dario said the idea was hatched two years ago, with his late father James Dario Jr. “I think this will be fun for kids and families, and it’ll give us a whole different look,” he said.
Mr. Dario has licensing to tour all six Island towns, but he intends to make the trolley tours strictly down-Island, and Oak Bluffs–centric. The trolley tours will be roughly an hour, and will stop throughout Oak Bluffs, with excursions to Edgartown and possibly Vineyard Haven, with no stops in either town.
“I want to work out an itinerary that will give people the flavor of Oak Bluffs,” he said. “I’d like to do pickup and drop-off on Circuit Avenue, which you can’t do with a regular tour bus. The trolleys are 26 feet long, roughly half the size of the tour buses, and they’re very easy to manage on Circuit Avenue and on the side streets. We might stop at the Inkwell, the Jaws bridge, talk about their history; and the Campground could be on the tour as well. My main objective is to begin and end the tour in Oak Bluffs. I’ll probably call it the Oak Bluffs Trolley Tour.”
The trolleys are made by Kannapolis Trolley Co. in Kannapolis, N.C., and cost $80,000 each. Mr. Dario expects delivery in early May, with tours beginning Memorial Day weekend. The prices for trolley tours have not been determined.
In addition to potentially increasing tourism revenue in Oak Bluffs, the trolleys may turn out to be a stroke of serendipity for the town. At the conclusion of Mr. Dario’s presentation to the selectmen, chairman of the roads and byways committee Michael Santoro jokingly asked if the trolleys could serve the proposed park and ride, which is quickly approaching a drop-dead date with the Vineyard Transit Authority (VTA), with many issues yet to be resolved. Mr. Dario appeared to surprise the board when he told them he was open to the idea. In a conversation with The Times on Wednesday, he reiterated his willingness to step in. “If things don’t work out with the VTA, I’m absolutely open to working with the park and ride,” he said. “I’d like to fill that void. I’d definitely entertain the idea.”