Advertisement

Tampa Bay transit agency heads for derailment

The 4-county Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit Authority will be insolvent next year.
 
A rendering from WSP Engineering shows what a potential neighborhood station could look like for a 41-mile bus rapid transit line connecting Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. On Friday, the board of the regional transit agency, known commonly by the acronym, TBARTA, acknowledged the authority is headed toward its demise because of funding issues.
A rendering from WSP Engineering shows what a potential neighborhood station could look like for a 41-mile bus rapid transit line connecting Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. On Friday, the board of the regional transit agency, known commonly by the acronym, TBARTA, acknowledged the authority is headed toward its demise because of funding issues. [ WSP Engineering ]
Published Oct. 21, 2022|Updated Oct. 21, 2022

Tampa Bay’s regional transit agency is poised to crash and burn.

The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit Authority, known commonly by the acronym TBARTA, is facing a looming financial crunch and its board acknowledged Friday the agency is headed toward its demise.

“Without projects, without a plan, without something to point to that we all get behind regionally, I don’t see a path forward and I will support dissolution,” said Hernando County Commissioner Jeff Holcomb.

Holcomb, who is running for the state Legislature, said, if elected in November, he “would have no problem” filing a bill in Tallahassee to disband the agency.

“We’ve reached a dead end in this format and we have to find another one,” said Pasco commission chairperson Kathryn Starkey.

What that format will be is not yet determined. Board members agreed to wait until January to discuss how to legally dismantle the state-created agency and to divest its assets.

The authority’s future has been in doubt since June when Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed legislative appropriations to the authority for a third consecutive year. The Legislature had included $1.375 million for the agency for operating expenses and a commuter transportation service. State Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, also made a second, unsuccessful attempt to disband the agency via proposed legislation.

Some members of the authority — consisting of Hernando, Pasco, Hillsborough, Pinellas, and Manatee counties and the cities of Tampa and St. Petersburg — also balked at providing continued financing. On Thursday, the Pinellas County Commission became the latest local government to question its contribution, but made no formal decision.

“Certainly, I don’t think we should be funding the organization any more,” Commissioner David Eggers said Thursday.

The city of Tampa and Hernando and Pasco counties also have withheld funding. The agency, with a $2.4 million annual budget of mostly state and federal grants, will run out of money by early in the 2024 fiscal year.

The authority’s demise shouldn’t be a surprise. At a Sept. 9 agency retreat, nearly two-thirds of 26 board members, affiliates and staffers participating said they were not confident in the agency’s future.

The authority has been unable to overcome parochial concerns during the planning of its first project — a proposed 41-mile bus rapid transit route connecting Wesley Chapel to Tampa and St. Petersburg. Hillsborough County representatives objected saying it would duplicate services that local bus agencies could provide if they were properly funded. Meanwhile, other board members supported expanding the plan, and expense, of running the buses on non-existent express lanes on the interstate highway to Pasco County.

Keep up with Tampa Bay’s top headlines

Subscribe to our free DayStarter newsletter

We’ll deliver the latest news and information you need to know every morning.

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

Explore all your options

“Hillsborough County has been a major block to us being able to move forward,” Pinellas Commissioner Janet Long said Friday.

But Hillsborough commission chairperson Kimberly Overman noted Pinellas County cut its funding subsidy to the Cross-Bay Ferry running between the downtowns of Tampa and St. Petersburg.

“So, there have been situations where Hillsborough’s not the only one that says ‘No, I’m not going to play.’ ” she said.

The state created the authority in 2007 as a seven-county transportation planning agency. The Legislature paired its members to five counties and the cities of St. Petersburg and Tampa in 2017 and refocused its mission on transit.

“I hate to use the words doomed to fail,” said Pinellas Commissioner Renee Flowers, “but it certainly was difficult to succeed when you are established, but not funded.”