A Jim Thorpe trolley company hoping to run shuttles from the east side of town to the downtown area will not be able to use the lot at Memorial Park to park vehicles.

Borough Council unanimously rejected a proposal from Ed and Lynn Humphreys of Jim Thorpe Trolley Tours on Thursday night, saying it could not meet several of the items requested by the couple by their May 1 deadline.

Last week, the Humphreys addressed council, proposing a new venture that would see visitors park on the east side of town, either in the L.B. Morris Elementary School parking lot or the back portion of the Memorial Park parking lot and then be shuttled downtown.

“We’ve already purchased one vehicle and in order to proceed, we would need to purchase another larger vehicle to move more people,” Lynn said last week. “We realize once the county lot gets full downtown, the cars are streaming in at a pretty good rate with nowhere to really go and we are hoping we can help provide a solution.”

Councilman Mike Yeastedt said Thursday that the couple asked to use the borough’s electronic signs to direct motorists to the parking lots where they could pick up the shuttle.

“We can’t allow them to use those, because we need them for different events around the borough,” Yeastedt said. “We also don’t think it’s appropriate to paint lines for parking spots in the rear of the Memorial Park lot, because we’re eventually going to need to do work on the lot.”

According to Ed Humphries, the shuttles would run four times an hour with the main hang-up at this point being where the drop-off point would be and where the shuttles would turn around to head back to the east side parking lots. The shuttles would primarily run Friday to Sunday.

Humphreys proposed turning left into the county lot, but that was an idea not favored by council.

“That is another reason this isn’t going to work as proposed,” Yeastedt said. “Left turns into that lot is what causes backups in the first place.”

Council President Greg Strubinger said the governing body received emails from residents on the east side of town expressing concern about the trolley company’s use of the lots. One of them came from James Rusbarsky, a West Tenth Street resident.

“According to the zoning map the L.B. Morris School is designated as a residential area, R-2-medium density residential,” Rusbarsky said. “Carbon County Career and Technical Institute is located in zone R-1, which is low density residential, showing it would have less of an impact on the citizens of the borough. The residents of Jim Thorpe have to deal with traffic problems with the downtown business district. This would extend it into the residential areas of town by using the L.B. Morris school.”

While Strubinger said Thursday’s vote takes the borough’s part of the proposal out of play, the Humphreys are welcome to continue negotiating with the school district for the use of the L.B. Morris lot.