Moving drunks around

In a piece in today's Flagpole, outlining the stricter stance the ACC Solicitor is taking toward underage drinking, editor Ben Emanuel notes some possible transportation solutions to the motorcade of drunkards leaving downtown every night between 10 and 3:00 a.m.:

Also at the meeting, bar owners heard from Athens Transit Director Butch McDuffie, who noted that late-night bus service for downtown hasn’t been discussed much since a brief attempt foundered a few years ago. In a sign of the good that might yet come out of the revived HRP, though, the newly-assembled group was unanimous in its enthusiasm to renew planning discussions for late-night transit service to get downtown-goers home safely.

The group heard, too, from Matt Presnell, who with his brother started a local outfit of the company Zingo this spring. Zingo, now operating in eight cities across the country according to its website, offers customers an insured, sober driver with a fold-up mini-motor-scooter that fits in a car’s trunk for the ride home, giving the hired driver a way back downtown after getting the car and its occupants home safely.