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The Brooklyn Paper / Sarah Portlock

The Heart of Brooklyn trolley takes passengers on a six-stop loop with stops at the Brooklyn Museum, Children’s Museum, Prospect Park, Botanic Garden, Public Library and Prospect Park Zoo. The goal is to get tourists to come from Manhattan.

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The Brooklyn Paper / Sarah Portlock

Park Slope parents Leslie Merritt (center) and her two boys, with friend Vanessa Rudin and her two sons, disembark the Heart of Brooklyn trolley at the Brooklyn Children’s Museum in Crown Heights.

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The Heart of Brooklyn trolley is back in business — but the van’s opening weekend revealed that it’s still mostly Brooklynites who take it, not the Manhattan tourists that organizers hoped to spirit around the borough.

The new trolley-bus is the second incarnation of an effort to bring tourists to Brooklyn’s wealth of cultural sites — and one of the three new routes goes into Manhattan for the first time, picking up (or trying to pick up!) passengers at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Bryant Park.

On Sunday, only three passengers boarded in the Manhattan stops. Two of them were Brooklynites looking for a free ride home, while the third took the trolley from the Met to Brooklyn — and back — without even getting off the bus, in a bit of drive-by tourism.

So in total, 29 passengers took the trolley on Sunday, with five repeat passengers, according to data provided by Heart of Brooklyn, the consortium of local cultural venues that is providing the transport.

Those numbers were similar to the original fake trolley, which ended up being used as a shuttle for local residents.

“So far [this time], it’s most families taking their kids to the park,” admitted Marisa Wood, the Heart of Brooklyn tourism officer. “But a lot of people were responsive to it in our test runs, and they really loved the idea.”

Locals certainly love it — why not? It saves them on gas, Metrocard or parking money.

“If you don’t have a car, this is the way to go,” said Park Sloper Leslie Merritt, who took the bus to transport herself and her two young boys to the revamped Brooklyn Children’s Museum on Sunday afternoon.

Merritt and her husband, Kevin, caught the trolley at the Brooklyn Public Library’s central branch for the 10-minute ride down Eastern Parkway. The trolley also goes to the Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn Museum and the zoo in Prospect Park.

“It’s free, it’s cold outside and this is better than walking,” Kevin said. “We wanted to go to the Children’s Museum, but it’s hard. There’s no great way to get there.”

The Merritts did have one complaint: It was hard for them to figure out where the trolley actually stops.

“They need is more advertising,” Kevin Merritt said. “If they had a pick-up in the heart of Park Slope, it would be full every weekend!”

Full of Brooklynites — but that’s not the goal this time around.

This version of the fake trolley is after bigger quarry. In addition to the Sunday-only Manhattan route, there will be alternating Saturday runs to Williamsburg, Red Hook and Bay Ridge. On Saturday, 11 people boarded from Red Hook and came to the heart of Brooklyn.

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

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