Inspired by Dave Pinero’s description of the New Tampa Hartline user input tour, I dropped in at the Temple Terrace meeting before one of my exams last night.
A few interesting ideas were tossed around. First, the Hartline people seem really excited about BRT, a solution that BloGax has mentioned before. Also, I asked about computer tracking and smart signs of this ilk and Hartline has apparently just started a major project to install routes with this enabled. Cool. There are a number of solutions in place for catering people from North Tampa to Downtown and for making the bus faster than a car.
I mentioned Google Transit and a possible route planning framework, maybe in partnership with Google, or in-house through their own website. This mainly got them talking about all the cool things they’d like to do with their website and its current woeful inadequacy. I had to agree, most of the information is static and unhelpful to a potential commuter. Some dynamic or real-time content would be nice, I must say. So I asked, how many responses have you gotten to that online survey of yours? The answer? About 72 a day. Gasp! I could double that if all of my blog’s unique visitors were to take such a survey. Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more. (Some of you don’t live in Hillsborough County, so local residents only on this one)
Then I popped the (insert-government-budget-number-here) dollar question. Light Rail? Any chance in the near future. The answer, the federal dollars were there, but no local commitment meant we got passed over. All the plans are still there, and the idea’s ready to fly if the political climate changed just slightly. Remember that at the polls. Or mention rail in that survey of theirs.