Tampa Bay Transit: How rapid buses left light rail in the dust
Transit leaders have spent years trying to build a transportation system that would span the Tampa Bay region and allow residents to travel from one end of the bay to the other without having to drive across it. Now they're closer than ever to that goal.
From article, (Transit leaders have spent years trying to build a transportation system that would span the Tampa Bay region and allow residents to travel from one end of the bay to the other without having to drive across it.
Now they’re closer than ever to that goal. But the first transit system to connect Tampa Bay won’t be light rail.
Also known as BRT, it’s a system that allows buses to travel more quickly along dedicated lanes, avoiding the traffic jams that choke the region.
A 40-mile BRT route connecting Wesley Chapel to downtown Tampa to downtown St. Petersburg has emerged as the leading option in the $1.5 million study undertaken by Jacobs Engineering to bring regional transit to the bay area.
The goal of the Regional Premium Transit Feasibility plan is to come up with a realistic project that can earn federal dollars. For years, local leaders believed that would be light rail. But referendums to build such a system have failed on both sides of the bay, and political support has always lagged.
But it’s not just the metrics that have flipped. The sentiment of many local political and business leaders has switched, too. Many who were strong advocates of light rail are now throwing their weight behind BRT.
What changed? Ask those in the business community, such as Tampa Bay Partnership president Rick Homans, and it’s clear that technology developments such as driverless vehicles and ridesharing have many rethinking whether light rail will become outdated in the future.
State politics may also be a factor: Legislators seem to favor investing in those technologies instead of light rail.
Ask local politicians like Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, and they’ll say that the region needs a transit win — any kind of win. And if BRT is more likely to succeed than light rail, then BRT it is.
"Candidly, I’m tired of talking about it," Buckhorn said. "We need a victory. .?.?. I can say with a great deal of certainty if we move toward a BRT model using the existing interstate, we can get this done much more quickly than another prolonged debate in a political referendum about whether or not rail is appropriate for our area or not.
The ideal regional BRT system would feature covered stations with platforms, Homans said, where sliding glass doors open and people step from the platform onto the vehicles. The buses are expected to have a dedicated lane for a majority of the route, allowing them to bypass regular traffic. What constitutes a dedicated lane might change based on what portion of the 40-mile route people are using.
For example, BRT could use the managed express toll lanes planned for the new Howard Frankland Bridge while crossing the bay. Once it hits the West Shore area, it might travel in its own lane along the expansive median of I-275 — which has been set aside as a transit corridor — until it reaches downtown Tampa. On other parts of the interstate, it could use the shoulder or breakdown lane, a concept that transit agencies have used in cities like Chicago.
The vehicles might not even look like traditional buses. Instead, they could be smaller, more agile vehicles.
"I think the idea is to get vehicles that don’t look like your standard bus, that have more of a rail feel to them, but the technology is still rubber tire," Kriseman said. "So you’re kind of combining the feel of rail with the cost and flexibility of BRT.")
No comments:
Post a Comment