Charleston transportation officials believe getting the Hospitality on Peninsula (HOP) shuttle rolling again is important, now that the pandemic has waned. The shuttle for transporting hotel and restaurant workers from a park-and-ride lot to downtown jobs became inactive when the pandemic hit in 2020.
“The concept was to give people a safe and convenient way to get in and out of the core of the peninsula [for] people who work in the hospitality and retail industries,” said Mike Seekings, city councilman who chairs the county’s CARTA bus network. “It was a circulator route that ran 19 hours a day and the lot allowed for parking right in the city of Charleston.”
When HOP launched in April 2018, it provided $5 parking in a 170-space lot, where Charleston Tech Center is now located. The all-day ride service offered a free route with eight stops that ran down Meeting Street from Romney Street to Broad Street and back up East Bay Street. The bus line and parking lot were made possible through a cooperation between the city of Charleston, the CARTA bus line, the Charleston Visitors Bureau and Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments (BCDCOG).
As general manager of Charleston Grill for 18 years, Mickey Bakst said he saw first-hand how HOP was a game changer for hospitality and retail workers.
“Charleston has become too expensive for the working class person to work down there on the peninsula,” Bakst said. “If the city wants to have employees who can help continue our legacy as the most hospitable city, we need to be hospitable to the employees who make that goal a reality.”
Hopping into gear
on the service
Seekings said the initial steps for bringing back the HOP service is identifying where a park-and-ride lot could be located and talking to the city about extending parking meter hours to 10 p.m. Currently, meters stop at 6 p.m.
“While I recognize that [changing the hours] was not popular among everybody, it was the right thing to do,” Seekings said. “We have 7,000 hospitality workers on the peninsula at any given time and in the core of the peninsula, there are about 350 parking spaces — it became a little bit of a parking roulette. The whole idea was to extend meter hours to ensure transient parking and to define how we would move people in and out safely, conveniently and affordably.”
Seekings said some current options for the parking lot location include a plot of land owned by CARTA and BCDCOG at the north end of the proposed Lowline project on Mount Pleasant Street, as well as other parcels of land in the East Bay/Morrison Drive corridor.
“The board of CARTA wants to put this service back on the street,” Seekings said. “We recognize there are some challenges to doing it, but we certainly want to do so. When we first [changed the meters,] there was some resistance from the food and beverage industry. They didn’t like the notion. But, once we put it in place, it worked and the ridership numbers were fantastic.”
BCDCOG is starting a grant-funded peninsula route restoration study, which could have a big influence on whether HOP is brought or not, said BCDCOG Regional Strategist Daniel Brock.
“We’ll be working with a consultant to really dive deeply into the peninsula’s needs for public transit,” Brock told the City Paper. “We’ll be looking at the findings from that later this year to help inform next steps for downtown service.”
CARTA currently offers three free DASH routes that provide service throughout the peninsula and the Route 20 King Street line that runs from Mount Pleasant Street down to Broad Street.
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