Tampa: Is Transit the Missing Link?

I'm not what you would call an optimist.  But I just moved to Tampa, Florida, and I'm feeling, for me, fairly upbeat. Two factors are putting me on the sunny side of the state.

First, let's be honest, when you're at or near the bottom, there's not much to do but improve.  Lately all the news seems bad.  Consider this:

• The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the Tampa Bay Area's unemployment rate was 12.7% for March, 2010.  That's horrible, but at least an improvement over our January peak of 13.2%
• Bay Area home prices declined 11% in 2009, making us the second worst performing housing market in the country.
• In February, Forbes declared us the worst area in the United States for commuters.
• The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index ranked the Tampa Bay Area among the unhappiest metro areas in the United States recently.
• GMAC Insurance reports that Florida's drivers rank among the worst 10 states in the nation.  Of course, reckless driving is not just a safety problem, it drives up insurance costs for everyone.
• In 2009, Transportation for America and the Surface Transportation Policy Project ranked Florida the worst in the nation for pedestrians and cyclists.

This gives the impression we're all trying to run over each other, what with our unhappiness, cheap homes, and free time from being unemployed.

Still, there are good things going on here.  Some extraordinary beaches and wilderness areas have been preserved despite the best efforts of developers to bulldoze every square inch.  Tampa is an international air and sea hub.  We have an increasingly diverse workforce, not to mention the University of South Florida.

One recurring theme in Tampa, and the entire Tampa Bay Area, is poor transportation.  Florida transportation departments at every level, historically, have been primarily road builders.  The result has been endless sprawl.  I have to think that contributes to our inability to attract employers and the resulting unemployment and unhappiness.

And that's the second reason I'm upbeat:  Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio has been leading the charge to develop a comprehensive area transit system that includes light rail and expanded bus service.  I haven't lived in Tampa long but I can't help but like the Mayor.  She just looks like an optimist, something we need these days.

In a recent column for the St. Petersburg Times, the Mayor wrote, "I see the construction of a modern transit system as critical to our future economic growth and quality of life."  She wisely points out that comparable cities like Charlotte, Phoenix and Dallas have successfully implemented light rail networks.  We are "at least 20 years behind in building a comprehensive transportation system," and this leaves us in poor standing when the Great Recession finally drags to an end.

It's when things seem worst that planning for the future can be most important.  Despite a year's worth of bad news about Tampa, serious people like Pam Iorio are looking at the long term.  The Tampa Bay Area has shown such promise in the past, imagine what a serious transit network will do for us.  Voters in Tampa and the rest of Hillsborough County will hopefully have a chance to vote this November to fund light rail.  I've lived in, and traveled to, areas with serious mass transit systems and it makes a tremendous difference in the quality of life.  And there's good evidence that transit spending is a more effective economic tool than road building.

So I'm optimistic about Tampa's future.  There are still plenty of good things about this area, and the right transit system will bring it all together.

Why is it called A New Sidewalk?

I didn't even notice the lack of sidewalks.  When I bought our house in St. Petersburg, Florida, in 2004, I didn't notice that the nearest sidewalk was four blocks away.  If you've ever bought a home, maybe you'll sympathize with me; we often overlook something that becomes important later.

In my defense, I was distracted by history.  I grew up in a quiet suburban neighborhood in a smallish Indiana town.  No sidewalks in that neighborhood, either.  There was so little traffic we never seemed to miss them.  (That's the house in the photograph.  Nice neighborhood, except for the occasional ice storm.)

Growing up, my family vacationed on Florida's Gulf coast almost every year.  It was, and still is, common among Midwesterners.  I could walk for hours on the beach and be perfectly happy.  Isn't the beach just a sidewalk for the ocean?  So I grew up with a nostalgic affection for coastal Florida.  Even when I lived in California, I imagined that one day I would live near the Gulf of Mexico.

Julie and I lived in North Carolina from 2001 to 2004.  Of course, we lived in a neighborhood without sidewalks.  Those were boom years for Florida real estate.  We decided to buy into the St. Petersburg housing market even before moving here.  (Don't laugh - you probably didn't see the housing market collapse coming, either.  That's a topic for another day.)  I came to St. Petersburg for a weekend in early 2004, spent a day on a whirlwind tour of houses, and took a bunch of photos to show Julie when I returned.  It was snowing heavily in North Carolina the day we looked at photos of houses in sunny Florida.

Given this history, I think I deserve some slack for not thinking about sidewalks.  Another factor in my favor, there is a county-wide recreational trail across the street.  Plenty of walking/running/cycling to be done there.

In his book The City Assembled, architectural historian Spiro Kostof speculates that the first sidewalks may have been built around 2000-1900 BC in the merchant colony of Kültepe, in what is now Turkey.  They didn't become widely used until the late 1800s.  In modern-day suburbs, like my current neighborhood, zoning and low density work against sidewalks.  Zoning keeps out retail that might benefit from sidewalk traffic.  Housing spread out in single-family homes with yards results in fewer people per block in need of a pedestrian-friendly area (and greater distances usually make walking anywhere impractical).  It's no surprise that sidewalks can dramatically improve safety for pedestrians.  And they can serve multiple purposes beyond the obvious pedestrian transit route.

Like the neighborhood where I grew up, our current neighborhood has little motor vehicle traffic.  But the streets are narrower; the drivers here are faster and less civil.  Certainly faster than traffic in ancient Kültepe.  Julie and I both enjoy walking and we miss having sidewalks.  We like living in St. Petersburg, it's just, well, we should have been looking for a neighborhood with sidewalks.  Lesson learned.