The controversial trolley pilot program on Marco Island

A trolley is causing an awful lot of controversy on Marco Island .

Some people are for the trolley, saying it will make getting around the island easier and will bring in tourist dollars.

However, many permanent residents are not fans of the plan.

WINK News reporter Jolena Esperto gave us their reasoning.

$200 thousand, the price tag for what the city council calls a pilot program to help curb traffic and congestion during the busy season from January through March.

But some, like Michael Josephs who calls Marco Island home, don't think it will help.

"This is an experiment for just three months, and it's $206,000 we have concerns about that for several reasons. Number one, most of the island citizens are against this. Number two, there are not clear metrics as to what a successful period of time for this trolley to run will be, we don't really know what. What does it mean?" asked Josephs.

Josephs attends the Marco Island City Council meetings regularly with a group that wears these buttons that say "Stop the trolley".

During the last meeting, Marco Island city councilor Rich Blonna said, "It just amazes me as a former academic, a former professor, whose whole life was dedicated to exploring knowledge, gaining new ideas, and studying things for the purpose of gathering information — how anti-intellectual this group is, how afraid of information."

"We were really, really appalled by the response by the city council," said Josephs.

The proposal would change route 21, which is Marco Island's Collier area transit bus.

Instead, there would be a trolley route with two beach busses that would continuously make trips up and down the Marco Island coast starting at Veterans Park.

Howard Reed spoke out against the pilot program, "This trolley, which is really just Collier County transit busses, going round and round and round all day into the evening. We do not want it."