East Pasco left out of transit plan

Mayor Cliff McDuffie doesn't want Zephyrhills and East Pasco left out of future plans for mass transit.

Last year, residents had to fight to keep one of only two bus routes serving the Zephyrhills area. Now city leaders are irked about a new Florida Department of Transportation study for the State Road 54/56 corridor that stops in Wesley Chapel.

The corridor is part of the master plan approved by the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit Authority. The long-range plan extends the route along State Road 56 all the way to U.S. 301 and north to downtown Zephyrhills. Consultant Michael Coleman said he is considering options ranging from express bus service to light rail or even toll lanes.

The DOT has budgeted $500,000 for the transit study, but it limited the parameters to the segment between U.S. 19 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, which is included in TBARTA's midrange plan. "The DOT does recognize the need to extend the corridor to Zephyrhills," planning director Ming Gao said. "But that will be studied at a later time."

Jim Edwards, executive director for the Pasco County Metropolitan Planning Organization, said the best way to expand the study would be to get TBARTA to include the segment in its 2035 plan.

Currently, the eastern segment is in the 2050 plan. TBARTA will update its master plan later this year, he said.

"We strongly recommend that TBARTA look at it again," McDuffie said. "We're very concerned about being left out again."

Dade City Mayor Scott Black agreed. "I know we have to do this in stages," Black said, but we "want to be in the mix in east Pasco."

The MPO's citizens' advisory committee also pushed for the study to include Zephyrhills. Coleman said the study is still in its early stages, and could be expanded.

"It's up to the DOT," he said. "They're entirely funding the study, so they could expand it. I'll do whatever they ask me to do."

The TBARTA plan calls for light rail along Bruce B. Downs through New Tampa and Wesley Chapel. Hillsborough County voters will decide in November whether to support a penny sales tax to pay for the transportation improvements.

Coleman said Pasco County's transit plan starts at Bruce B. Downs because that's where the transit line would link with the north-south line into Tampa. County planners say that without some form of transit on State Roads 54 and 56, the county would have to build 20 lanes of roadway between New Port Richey and Wesley Chapel.

It could be difficult to extend the transit study beyond Wesley Chapel, though, because the State Road 56 extension to U.S. 301 doesn't exist. "The road has been designed, but we don't know when it will be built," Gao said.