Just as we're being warned about massive backups on car-clogged Interstate 275, we're also setting off on the long road toward serious and sensible mass transit around here.
The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, known among transportation types as TBARTA, this week released its forward-thinking plan for a light rail and bus system to ultimately connect seven counties over the next few decades.
This is good news, even if paying for it will be a tough sell.
But about that geeky, ungainly acronym, TBARTA. (It's pronounced tee-BART-uh, if you don't happen to hang around transportation wonks who like to drop "TBARTA" at cocktail parties.)
If and when we become the sort of smart and thriving metropolis where you can hop a train to the airport or commute sans car — are we really going to call what we're riding "the TBARTA?"
As in, "Forget the Buick — I'm taking the TBARTA!"
Nah, doesn't work for me either. "It screams bureaucracy," admits one of those aforementioned transportation wonks, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.
What to do, when what planners need now is for taxpayers and local governments to embrace mass transit, when PR for TBARTA really matters — if gas prices, traffic and highway construction costs aren't enough to convince us?
Think about real cities with mass transit. London has the Underground, or the Tube, it being underground and, well, in a tube, plus that British voice urging you to "mind the gap." Paris has its Metro, with those lovely Gothic signs. In New York you ride the gritty subway.
But the best name has to be in Denver. Who doesn't want to ride the T-REX?
Someone was smart enough to come up with the clean and summery-sounding name "SunRail," complete with spiffy logo, for the Orlando-area commuter rail project. That way maybe people would quit referring to it as that CSX deal, or more specifically, that really controversial CSX deal.
So what about us? What do we do with TBARTA, when Boston already has dibs on The T and San Francisco snagged BART?
How about something friendly sounding, like your pal MARTA in Atlanta, or your buddy MARC in Baltimore?
We could be the Bay Area Regional Ride for You — BARRY!
Or not.
Okay, but even if this system does ultimately connect us from Citrus to Sarasota and out to Polk, can we please not ever be the Tampa Bay — which would inevitably wind up as "TB?"
Professionals get paid good money to think up catchy names like HART and DART. Instead, how about we have a contest, open to the public?
Those planners about to take their show on the road for the hard sell could give whoever comes up with the best name a lifetime pass, and at the same time involve the same people the system will serve. They could call it "Name That Train," though buses, too, are an integral part of TBARTA's plan. (That word again!)
What to name a mass transit system we need?
I guess the T-MEELTS — This Makes Economic, Environmental, Long-Term Sense — is a little long. See you on the BARRY.
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