Imagine coming to Panama City this summer and being free to enjoy your vacation, seeing more than you have ever seen before of both downtown and the beach, and never spending one second behind the wheel of your car waiting for the air conditioner to catch up. Imagine never having to fight traffic, or crowds and still being able to go wherever you want absolutely hassle free. No more burning up gasoline at three dollars plus per gallon waiting for traffic to clear. Watching beautiful sailboats and commercial fishermen and majestic ships navigate on St Andrews Bay instead of staring at someone else’s bumper. Sound like a fairy tale? It is not. You can forget about traffic on the new Hathaway Bridge being an obstacle to your visit to the Panama City Mall (the new bridge and the newly completed Thomas Drive Flyover have relieved a lot of the congestion already,) and enjoy the lovely view of St Andrews Bay from the top of the gorgeous Hathaway Bridge |
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The Bay Town Trolley system is a world class mass transit system that now covers more of Panama City, Panama City Beach, Lynn Haven, and Callaway than ever before. The trolleys are clean, spacious, well appointed, air conditioned, and comfortable. The drivers are friendly and helpful and can be counted on to help you remember your stop, or to tell you interesting things about the sights along your route. If you are one of the very fortunate, you will get to meet Mr. Brock, our personal choice for Trolley Driver of the Century. It only costs one dollar to ride in air conditioned comfort to any location on the beach route, and only costs two dollars if you want to cross over the new Hathaway Bridge and vice versa. Senior Citizens (Medicare Card for ID) and persons with disabilities ride for half price, and children 5 and under ride free. If you reach a turnaround point (where the Trolley has gone to its farthest point and turns to go back in the opposite direction) you have reached |
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the end of your fare. Travel back along the route requires a new fare. If you are enjoying an extended stay in our lovely community, you can obtain a monthly pass for a mere fifteen dollars a month. Passes can be purchased directly from the driver. There are stops and transfer points at the Lindell Senior Center, Panama City Mall, Downtown, St Andrews, the Marina Civic Center , the airport, and all the hospitals to name just a few. The stops are all marked with signs along the roadway. Some of the stops are now sheltered from rain and sun, and most now at least have benches to rest on during your short wait. The trolleys run from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; the addition of Saturday service is under consideration, but alas, is not yet fact.
Going beyond the end of the line? When the trolley reaches the end of
the route and turns around to start the route in the opposite direction,
it has reached the end of the line - and your fare. |
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Internet advertising spending by successful companies increased by 35% to more than 16 billion dollars last year. Consumer aimed ad spending, which included automobile, entertainment, hospitality, packaged goods, retail, and travel made up about half of all internet advertising spending in 2006. This information was gathered in a survey for the yearly Internet Advertising Bureau conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers and release as the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report. The Nielson Company, which, among other things, tracks popularity and statistics regarding television shows, also tracks the number of active home internet users. Their figures, as of March 2007 showed that there are almost 147 million home users of the internet in the U. S. In short, today’s advertisers are being drawn into the 21st Century, albeit kicking and screaming all the way. The internet has become a pivotal point in world advertising, and is fast becoming a focal point in the purchasing funnel. Many advertisers are becoming burnt out on the cost of advertising and the simple fact that there are few ways to determine what exactly their return on investment is on their advertising dollars. Why should anyone spend money to advertise unless they are absolutely certain that they are going to earn more from the advertising than they spent on it? The internet is providing a much more refined manner of determining ROI, and is actually helping advertisers to realize that the shotgun approach to advertising is truly not cost effective. More and more businesses are turning to marketing professionals who help them to determine the media mix required to reach targeted market segments. Mass media theory in the 20th Century urged businesses to “get out there and make your name known, and the customers will follow.” Not so any longer. With newspaper, periodical, radio, television, |
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and billboard ad costs soaring, the internet is rapidly bringing a new approach to mass marketing. Advertisers are now using the internet to screen prospects by interest, by need, and by geographic location.
Information is gathered to qualify prospects so that sales professionals can be prepared to provide need specific information even before their initial conversation with the customer. Information generated online allows businesses to determine what information they need to push locally to increase their product and service sales, and they can actually determine if there is a need to advertise and sell at a higher geographic level. The results of internet advertising, and the knowledge acquired from it, can be combined with local newspaper, periodical, radio, television, and billboard advertising. The knowledge acquired from the internet allows the individual business to allocate his budgeted resources more to the media that gets him the best, most cost effective results. In today’s competitive markets, certain types of business will generate better results with sales flyers and newspaper inserts, others will do better with a full page ad in a regional magazine. Still others find the images of television best suit their needs. Is your business tourist based? The internet reaches millions of people daily, it’s a good venue for your ad. If your business is based on a local economy, a website or other internet advertising may simply be a waste of time and resources. If you live in a city where tourism covers part of the year, and leaves you flat for 3 to 6 months per year, as it does in the Panama City metro area, you have to either seek a balance in your advertising, or better yet, create a situation in which tourism lasts all year round. Sound enough reasoning, but how many of us have thought it through and come to the same conclusions?
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Passengers who
remain on board past the turnaround point will be required to pay an
additional fare to ride back in the opposite direction.
Regular Fare:$1.00
Student Fare (with local ID),
Senior Citizen (with Medicare card), Persons with Disabilities:$0.50
Children 5 years old and younger: FREEMonthly Pass:$15.00Present your
Medicare card to board the Bay Town Trolley at half price!
Transfers good on next available bus only - not valid on same route.Bay
Town Trolley serves Bay County
Monday - Friday (6 a.m. - 6 p.m.)
The last Trolley departs at 5:30p.m. The Bay Town Trolley system served its first passengers in 1996 and has been winning awards and setting records ever since. 2006 was a banner year for Bay Town Trolley, finishing out the |
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year with a total of 309,149 riders. The buses are designed and built by Freightliner Specialty Vehicles Division to look like an old fashioned trolley car. The trolleys are handicap accessible, and have racks to store bikes and wheelchairs as well. New for this year are a number of covered shelters at stops and transfer points, and benches at stops where no shelters have yet been built According to Doug Boice, General Manager of Bay Town Trolley, this year will see the expansion of routes both on the beach and in town, new ride guides printed and distributed, and the use of a new shifting paradigm that will allow all of the posted departure times to be firm. The new system for scheduling the routes permits closer adherence to schedules and does not require the posting of arrival times. No trolley will leave any stop prior to
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its posted departure time. Ride guides are available at locations all over Panama City Beach .
If your vacation lifestyle has to make a statement for the environment, remember that Transit vehicles emit fewer pollutants per mile than a car.
Public transportation saves 1.5 billion gallons of gasoline yearly over automobiles. Every person riding one of the trolleys is one less person congesting local traffic. Comfortable, fun, relaxing, efficient, quick, inexpensive, and environmentally friendly. The foundations for the future of Panama City and Panama City Beach have been well laid. The incredibly strong desire of our residents to incorporate the best of our past with the technology and benefits of the 21st Century is giving rise to some amazing accomplishments. Our hats are off to the Bay Town Trolley. |
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