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Bus System Expansion Planned For Central Areas

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 15, 2008

WESLEY CHAPEL - It's no accident that nearly every house in this fast-growing subdivision has two cars in the driveway.

In an area that until recently was dominated by cow pastures and country roads, the family car is the primary way people get to work, schools and stores.

County officials hope to change that in the next few years by expanding Pasco County Public Transportation - the county-sponsored bus system - into the sprawling communities of central Pasco.

The bus system, which carried nearly a million riders last year, has its strongest support among residents and workers along the U.S. 19 corridor in west Pasco. The system has also seen recent growth in the Dade City area.

The county's new 10-year transit plan - approved last week by the county's transportation planning agency - calls for adding a cross-county route following State Road 54 in 2011 and a closed-loop circulator in Land O' Lakes four years later.

Routes within Wesley Chapel and between Wesley Chapel and Zephyrhills would follow in 2018 and beyond.
Transit officials see the new routes as a way to connect potential workers in west Pasco with thousands of retail jobs slated to open up in the coming years as three major malls take off in Wesley Chapel.

But transit officials face several hurdles before they can make a bus system work in the center of the county, transit experts said. Those challenges include:

•The spread-out nature of residential development in the area, which is now about half the minimum needed to make transit work.

•An abundance of gated communities and curvy subdivision streets that obstruct effective bus service.

•A population that supports the idea of transit, but shows little interest in using it.

"There's not a lot in central Pasco that has the density to support bus transit at this point in time," said Joel Rey, a senior project manager with Tampa consulting firm Tindale Oliver & Associates. Rey helped the county draft its 10-year transit plan.

While central Pasco is attracting apartment complexes and town house communities, the majority of residents live in subdivisions that average three homes per acre.

That development pattern proved too sparse for Waste Management, the trash hauler that abandoned central and east Pasco in 2007, saying it couldn't make a profit in the rapidly growing region. The same problem hinders the growth of transit, which needs at least seven homes per acre to work, said Joel Volinski, who studies transit at the University of South Florida's Center for Urban Transportation Research.

Before coming to CUTR, Volinski saw similar problems with efforts to develop transit in Broward County.

Curved streets and gated communities - two features at the heart of Pasco's suburban growth - make it hard for buses to reach people and for people to reach buses, Volinski said.

In some central Pasco subdivisions, residents may have to walk a mile or more from their home to the gated entrance to catch a bus. That kind of walk will deter most people from taking the bus, as will a lack of sidewalks leading to a bus stop, experts said.

"Virtually everybody that uses public transit is also a pedestrian," Volinski said.

The county created a list of guidelines last year aimed at getting residential and commercial developers to include spaces for bus stops in their projects. So far those facilities are few and far between in central Pasco, but they're coming, county officials said.

"The county is coordinating with Cypress Creek Town Center, The Grove at Wesley Chapel and The Shops at Wiregrass for future transit accommodation," said Mike Carroll, director of the county's bus system.

Carroll said his office will re-examine the potential for transit in central Pasco during the next update of the county's transit plan in 2013, or before if the situation warrants it.

A recent survey of Wesley Chapel residents found more than half say a transit system is needed in the region. But in that same survey, which Rey conducted as part of drafting the new transit plan, nearly the same number of residents said they wouldn't use a bus system if it were available.

Those who support transit appear to see it as a way to get other drivers off the road, Rey said.

"It's a very typical response," Volinski said.

Spiraling gas prices may change that situation, however, Volinski said.

PCPT has seen a dramatic growth in ridership in west Pasco coinciding with the steady climb in gas prices in recent years.

"Some of those that said they wouldn't use transit may change their minds," Volinski said.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com.

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