Point A to Point B on the Tampa Express

How we get from Point A to Point B in our daily lives consumes massive time and energy.  My current home in Pinellas County, Florida, and my (hopefully) future home in Hillsborough County, Florida, are not hotbeds of public transit progressivism.  With a few exceptions, local civic leaders embrace the inefficiency of roads and highways and exclude other transit modes.  Thankfully, there is serious talk these days about light rail (often led by Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio), but that is far off in the future.  For now, bus travel is our only public transit option.

So from time to time I'll select a Point A and Point B, geographically, and use public transit to make the trip.  This week I went from my home to a Borders in Tampa via an express bus that crosses Tampa Bay, connecting St. Petersburg and Tampa.  Julie works near this Borders, so I had a reference point for driving (and a ride home, something most transit riders don't have).

Bay Area residents have some idea of how difficult this trip is.  I traveled through two counties via two different transit agencies: PSTA (Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority) and HART (Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority).  My trip involved walking, riding a local St. Petersburg bus (PSTA), riding the express bus across Tampa Bay, and riding a local Tampa bus (HART).

According to Google, this is a distance of 21 miles.  My actual travel time was 1 hour, 23 minutes; Google Trip Planner estimates 1 hour, 48 minutes; Julie normally makes the drive in about 50 minutes.  Fifteen minutes of my travel time was walking from my house to the bus stop.

However, my total travel time, including waiting, was 3 hours.  I could have shortened this by taking a later local bus in St. Petersburg, but if that particular bus had been only 5 minutes late, I would have missed the express bus, leading to an additional 2 hour wait.  Wait time, of course, is crucial for transit users.

Here are a few take-aways from my bus experience:

• I haven't studied many of HART's routes, but many PSTA routes only run every half hour, some only once per hour.  This is not frequent enough to be practical for many people.  I don't blame PSTA for this; the real problem is that we have not sufficiently funded transit.

• Buses were clean and comfortable.  All the drivers were professional and courteous.  (This is more important than it sounds because I think driving a bus seems like a very stressful job.)  Buses ran on schedule; one even reached its destination a few minutes ahead of schedule.

• Counting student and senior discounts, PSTA offers 14 different fare options.  I appreciate the attempt to offer options, but this might be a little too much.  I would also like to see more area-wide fare options that integrate both PSTA and HART.

• The total fare was $6.50.  This is a little steep, but there are discounted multi-fare options for regular bus travelers.

• The individual fare for both HART and PSTA local buses is $1.75.  Exact change only.  For all those times when you have a dollar bill and three quarters handy.  This (not to mention potentially long wait times) can be a problem for the impulse traveler who just wants to go to a movie or shopping.  Until debit card readers are installed, the fares should be even dollar amounts.

• The day I took the bus was a beautiful spring day in Florida with high temperatures in the mid-70s.  Imagine waiting half an hour or longer at a bus stop during the Florida summer, with a heat index well over 100 degrees.  Now imagine that wait carrying groceries or with a child.  This is another argument for more frequent service.

• This was my first experience using Google's trip planner with public transit.  It was reliable and told me specifically which buses to take.  It did not, however, tell me the bus fare, so I still had to look at the individual transit agencies' web sites for this.

• The buses were not heavily used; there were only 5 passengers on the local PSTA bus and never more than 12 passengers on any of the three buses.  Many use this to support the abandonment of transit.  I feel the exact opposite is true - for all the reasons I've listed above (and more I'll surely think of later), this is evidence that we need to improve Bay Area transit and increase service frequency.  The more convenient it is, the more people will use it.