TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Search For Transportation Agency Director Under Way

ADVERTISEMENT

By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 28, 2008

Updated: 06/28/2008 12:17 am

SAN ANTONIO - The Tampa Bay area's new regional transportation board kicked off the search for a day-to-day leader Friday.

Some members of the Tampa Bay Regional Transportation Authority described the action as vital to jump-starting the decades-long task of knitting the seven-county region together with transit. The search for a new executive director will be led by TBARTA's three-member executive committee.

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio said hiring a director is crucial to moving forward with transit development.

Iorio was part of a TBARTA team that toured growing transit systems in Charlotte, N.C., Dallas and Denver this month. That group came back eager to get Tampa's transit efforts moving after seeing how far other cities have taken theirs.

"In the other communities, they had a single focus. They had someone who led the agency," Iorio said. "It's something we should get on right away."

The other communities' shared vision has been the key to their success, said TBARTA chairman Shelton Quarles.

"They said they had the same problems we did starting out," Quarles said. "But they had regional cooperation. You can never have enough public engagement."

State-chartered TBARTA relies on the Tampa Bay Partnership, a public-private consortium, for much of its current financing. This year legislators gave the authority a one-time infusion of $2 million that board members hope to use to entice a director and hire an attorney.

Legislators gave TBARTA the power to borrow money, levy tolls and condemn land, but no ability to levy taxes to raise money for its operations.

Sales tax increases finance regional transit systems in Charlotte, Denver and Dallas. Getting that kind of dedicated funding would require legislative action, said Bob Clifford, planning director for the Department of Transportation's Tampa office
During their June board meeting Friday in Pasco County, TBARTA members took the first step toward building a regional transit network by adopting a map outlining the major corridors where planners will focus their efforts.

The new map, drafted with the help of DOT planners, hews closely to existing major highway corridors linking the seven-county region bounded by Citrus County on the north and Sarasota County on the south.

The next round of study will narrow the list to a handful of major corridors based on their ability to support a future network system of highways, buses and rail transit, Clifford said.

To create the map adopted Friday, DOT planners ranked a variety of roads across the region according to how much population they serve.

At the top of the list of possible spine corridors is the Suncoast Parkway toll road linking Hernando County to western Hillsborough. Also on the list are Interstate 75, State Road 60 between Brandon and Tampa and the rail network Hillsborough County officials hope to knit into a transit system.

Missing from the regional road map is a proposed beltway DOT officials pitched last year that would run from Hernando County to Manatee County, cutting an arc across rural eastern Pasco and bisecting eastern Hillsborough.

That beltway proposal drew strong opposition from residents of the rural areas that would have been affected.

DOT officials dropped the route from maps because it scored low on their list of priorities for the future, Clifford said.

TBARTA members wrapped up their day in Pasco with a bus tour of Wesley Chapel, the epicenter of residential and commercial growth in recent years.

The Bruce B. Downs Boulevard corridor links Wesley Chapel with New Tampa - a factor that should make the area one of the first places to begin building the Tampa Bay area's future transit, said Pasco County Commissioner Ann Hildebrand, a TBARTA member.

"I see a great connection between Tampa's light rail and Wesley Chapel," Hildebrand said.

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

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT