Dedicated buses will ferry beachgoers to and from St. Pete -- and maybe further
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Imagine cruising to the beach in 30 minutes with no traffic or parking hassles. That’s the promise in Pinellas County aboard something called SunRunner.
It’s a new kind of bus that PSTA will use to move passengers between downtown St. Petersburg and the beaches.
SunRunner buses will be bigger and faster with fewer stops. It’s called BRT, which stands for Bus Rapid Transit. It could be a model for the rest of the Tampa Bay Area.
“We are 40 years behind the times in terms of what needs to be done for a growing and thriving economy,” said Pinellas County commissioner and PSTA board member Janet Long.
Long and other leaders on both sides of Tampa Bay have been pushing for regional mass transit for decades. She was among the officials on hand Monday for a ceremonial groundbreaking for the Tropicana Field station for SunRunner. U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, D-St. Petersburg presented a $21.8-million check from the U.S. Department of Transportation, which covers most of the cost of the system, which is to be operational in early 2022.
SunRunner buses will run a 10.3-mile route between downtown St. Pete and the beaches, with a bus arriving every 15 minutes.
“It’s going to help beach businesses because there’s a deficit of parking,” said St. Petersburg City Council member Darden Rice. “This is going to bring more tourists who want to visit downtown St. Pete.”
Pinellas beach towns signed on to the plan when routes and stops were worked out over months of planning.
“When we’ve got somebody staying at one of our resorts and it’s maybe a [dreary] day like this and they don’t want to go to the beach, they can jump on this and go to the Dali or the Pier,” said Mayor Alan Johnson of St. Pete Beach.
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Regional mass transit planners would like to see BRT extend across the bay via a new Howard Frankland Bridge to Westshore, downtown Tampa, the USF area, and Wesley Chapel -- a total of 41 miles.
That would take many millions of dollars and the support of leaders in Tampa and Hillsborough County.
Hillsborough Commissioner Pat Kemp says they will meet with transit planners later this month, but she’s not on board with their current thinking.
“It would be a parking garage project,” said Kemp, referring to proposed garages along the interstate where motorists could park their cars and ride the BRT.
If the fast buses are to be an answer to the Tampa Bay Area’s historic mass transit deficit, they could face a bumpy road in Hillsborough County, but on this day in Pinellas, SunRunner became the first possible solution to break through in the region’s seemingly endless mass transit logjam.