 By Curt Tucker August 20, 2007
As far as the busses and the pollution, hmmm I'd rather be behind a bus that does 20mph and smell a little bit of diesel, than be stuck behind a horse trolley doing maybe 3mph and smelling horse manure and trying to dodge it. This is not an abandoned western ghost town of the 17 or 1800's. Now I have a nice big dent and a huge scrape going down the side of my truck that I worked very hard for and try to keep as nice as I can because they aren't getting any cheaper. I was just in complete disbelief when the trolley swiped me, It was as if the driver either wasn't paying attention to the road or didn't care, either way, I could tell that there wasn't going to be enough room for both of us, so I pulled over so far both passenger tires were on the sidewalk when I was hit. Then to top it off, the driver didn't yell at the horses to stop until he had run it all the way down the side of my truck, with a very loud screeching & crashing noise -- would have had to be deaf & blind not to notice that. I mean there was absolutely NO effort on his part to avoid the accident. It's been a couple of weeks since this has happened and I have already talked to two different people that they have also hit. So I'm not the only one. I have also heard from a family member that actually worked for them because her love for horses she told me there were a couple separate occasions where a couple horses were just simply way to exhausted & over worked and they fell over in the middle of the road & basically passed out, kinda sounds like animal cruelty to me. There is no lack of tourist attractions in this town, and to have horse trolleys impeding traffic in everyone's daily life is just wrong. Why don't they have a bus take them to Connell Lake & do the tours up there rather than make everyone else who are trying to do what they need to do to make a living in town suffer, and have to hear criticism from their boss because it took too long to get to the job. It very much reminds me of some kind of circus with these trolleys impeding everyone's day. I also could really do without that foul odor of horse manure that is supposedly picked up by someone, but they are probably stuck in traffic due to a trolley up the road a few hundred yards. The police officers that responded to the "accident" were very nice & professional, even I must say I was surprised to hear how they also felt about the trolleys and how it's absolutely ridicules that they get away with what they do. I timed myself going through town a couple of days ago when I got stuck behind a trolley at Tatsuda's, it took me 21 minutes to get from Tatsuda's to the tunnel. That's just absolutely wrong because my paycheck suffers from them now too, and it's not like this problem started yesterday or a year or two ago. For years these trolleys have been causing people grief. It just took me that long to lose my patience with the trolleys. For us people that have working busy day lives like I do, 90% of Ketchikan does feel the same way about them, just ask. For the people who don't have anyone or anything ever waiting on them and enjoy a one hour drive through downtown Ketchikan smelling horse manure, ya I guess that you don't have to worry about them. Curt Tucker About: " Lived in Ketchikan for 60 years and all family members are residents" Viewpoints - Opinion Letters:
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