The Rant

Here in the big(ger) city, I'm having the first somewhat cool evening I can recall in awhile.  It reminds me that the fingers of summer are fast breaking.  Then I found this on my hard drive.  It's an awkwardly skewed picture of Dick Greco Plaza.  It was part of pic set that, going by the time stamps, had to be among the very last taken before I hustled my caboose up to these parts.

As I have no rant I merely seek to share these final days with a nice picture, Tampa style!

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• Candidates to speak to Wellswood group - Tbo.com
• Hillsborough boys cross country preview - Tampabay.com (blog)
• Community plan causes strife - Tbo.com

Tweets by HART

• Over 700 people like us on #fb! We almost feel like the cool kids in school. Almost. It's the Breakfast Club 2 here -> http://bit.ly/GoHART
• Is water ferry service connecting downtown St. Pete and Tampa coming? http://bit.ly/aV5bRW
• Web Wednesday stories on our blog: We want to hear from you... and how transit creates jobs. Check them out! http://bit.ly/a0G5xs
• Web Wednesday stories on our blog: We want to hear from you... and how transit creates jobs. Check them out! http://bit.ly/a0G5xs

The Rant

Back to the work week!  How's that office/cubical/shared work pit feeling today? 

Great!, let's get down to business.

Aside from the interesting article below about foreign interest in getting the HSR build between Tampa and Orlando below, there's not much to ramp up with just yet. Therefore I thought I'd plug this light rail advocate video, new to You Tube this month.

Irony alert: The video appears to be produced by the Auto Channel. This is refreshingly harmonious nod from an unlikely viewpoint.  Transportation choice is not about cars versus rail, it's about the availibility of choice and the wisdom (and business sense) to provide it.

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• Foreign companies enter the race to build Tampa-Orlando high-speed rail - The Florida Independent (blog)

The Rant

This labor day weekend, question your quality of life.  Is a single-mode choice for getting around, your car, contributing to a completely comfortable lifestyle that maximizes your persuit of freedom and expression, or, is it your ball and chain?  One that ties up a good portion of your budget, leaving no choice for happiness with your family or other persuits that could define you outside your labor role in the time you spend on earth.

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• Labor Day Closings - Tampabay.com

Tweets by Moving Hillsborough Forward

• Good article today. Great points and ideas. http://fb.me/G7jTXzUy

The Rant

Note the first express link below about tax initiatives pushed during the recession.  They quote a guy from some anti-tax organization who tells us that people have reservations about approving community investment plans during economic downturns.   I balk at that of course because most people who are not sitting around all day "afearin' the dang gum government gonna' take all our money", understand that recessions are temporary.  If anything, the flush of jobs such initiatives can create, if left to get off the ground in time, help to speed up recovery.  A retroactive period of constructive introspection during these hard times is exactly what Hillsborough County needs.  When things pick up again, which they will, an emerged transit system will mushroom Tampa with opportunity and prosperity!

I always try to remember the source of the "but we're in a recession" messages.  These are vicious anti-tax, anti-transit, pro-selective-livability people who never support community investment.  Think about the obvious here.  Were these people at all likely to support rail development when times were good?  Will they change their tune when the economy does turn around?  No, of course not.  There will be a new reason to oppose rail and general livability - one that moves and changes with the times and keeps their backwards philosophies self-viable.  These people don't make intellectual arguments, they're ideologues and it's high time their grip on Hillsborough County ended.

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• Transportation tax initiatives pushed amid lingering recession - Tampa Bay Business Journal (blog)
• In print: Tampa General's effort to compromise, BP claims get tougher - Tampa Bay Business Journal (blog)
• Tampa Bay & Florida news > Labor Day Closings - Tampabay.com

Tweets by TBARTA

• What a great study! Charlotte light rail riders lose inches from collective waist - http://bit.ly/bI9NUv

The Rant

Something I really wished I hadn't let go by awhile back without celebration was the announcement that work had begun, offiicially, however tepidly, on the High Speed Rail line between Tampa and Orlando.  Alas, we can relive the moment now thanks to 10 News Connects.  Of course, we do have to accept the commercial.

The work simply involves collecting samples up and down the corrider, but that's a start.  It's real.  It's happening.  Yay!

The video also goes deeply into the local power sentiment that high speed rail won't succeed without light rail.  I would agree that it won't carry the same seamless punch to the city without it, but, my personal hope is that by virtue of the station's proximity to downtown, it will be considered walkable to at least a few residential high rises.   Thus making living in Tampa and working in Orlando about as common as it is for those folks up here who commute regularly from Conneticut or even Pennsylvania to work in New York City. 

Anyway, I'm still a bit shell-shocked at all the neat rail stuff you lucky folks get to live with as it emerges all around you.  If anyone posts pictures of any of the work being done on the line, transit referendum voting activity, or, anything therein, don't hesitate to let the readers here at TR know about it.

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• County Commission Chairman Bob English Wants Tax Break to Help Economy - The Ledger
• Malls, attractions in Hillsborough open on Labor Day - Tampabay.com

You Tube

• Tired of Traffic?
• Benefits of HART Flex

Tweets by Moving Hillsborough Forward

• two months until election day!!
• Check out this great testimonial by MHF supporter Tatiana and watch for more to come over the next few weeks!! http://fb.me/yS29Tk6Z
• Supporter Report from the Field: Trying to get to New Tampa, traffic so backed up on 275 that I switched to... http://fb.me/Bj4vRrAl

The Rant

HART has been posting some really great stuff on its You Tube channel.  If they'll pardon the direct embed here's an exciting one that shows off what a light rail station in downtown Tampa will look like.

And here's another I found interesting.  It's a clip showing off how priority lighting will actually work with HART's upcoming MetroRapid bus rapid transit service.  Now, this one is a little surprising.  My impression of signal prioritization was that a bus travels on a road alongside all other vehicular traffic and, as it approaches a stoplight, it changes it to green, or, in some cases, prolongs an existing green light.  Well, as you can see in this video it means something entirely different.  In this demonstration, a bus travels along in the right lane of a 2 lane road (Nebraska Avenue perhaps).  Rather than change the traffic light for all traffic in the road, it changes the light in its own lane only.  So, it's possible you'll be sitting waiting for a green light alongside a HART bus when suddenly the bus goes.  Be careful! :)

I suspect in reality this is just a variation of signal prioritization.  One supposes that because HART produced this video, this will in fact be how it works for some stretches of the line, which is pretty cool and clever.  It explains how integration on such a narrow straightaway like Nebraska will be pulled off.

Tampa Rail Express Links

Tweets by TBARTA

• Expanding the Jolley Trolley service could be great for North Pinellas County - http://bit.ly/dknfc4

Tweets by Hartline

• Brandon, Tampa, Temple Terrace, Plant City, South County, Town N' Country, New Tampa - what's in the RTIP for you? http://bit.ly/dCWlce

The Rant

Here's a way to blow ten thousand bucks fast.  Support a campaign against Mark Sharpe with hopes of "punishing" him and the rail cause at the polls months ahead of the actual vote for transit investment.  Opponents believed that targeting and bringing down Mark would be the first tangible salvo against this unstoppable movement for quality living overtaking Tampa and Hillsborough County.  But in the end, instead, they were hit with the reality of their own delusional assessment over what people in Hillsborough County really want for its future.

Carried by the very wind of Democracy that anti-taxers hate with such passion, Mark Sharpe prevailed in his election not by a squeaker, but a stomper.  A crusher.  A mangler.   Read:  55 to 45 percent. 

This unsurprising election outcome in favor of Mark made fools of the small but fiesty self-righteous group of individuals determined to keep Tampa a rural metropolitan entitled only to a select few.  Let's jubilantly re-read "Antitax Group Starts Campaign Against Mark Sharpe" at TampaBay.com's Bay Buzz, now, after the fact, when it reads at its silliest.

Ten thousand dollars to "defeat" Mark?  Sure, while the anti-taxers crow about the economic wisdom of a solid civic project such as the introduction of Tampa's first modern urban rail line, they see nothing wrong with squandering money with the reckless abandonment of a hundred fat cat pork-driven politicians which they claim to accurately identify and hate, on such a lost cause as defeating Mark and rail.  Sure, let's trust these guys with serious input on Hillsborough County economic policy.

You might accuse me of over-reaching the significance of failing to de-throne Mark, so in my defense I'll wrap this rant up by quoting Doug Guetzloe, the dude who actually chairs the creepy group behind the selective-livability agenda for Hillsborough County, and who was he himself largely responsible for rounding up so many stray and idle dollars to help lead that charge. 

As reported by Janet Zink over at Bay Buzz - quoting Guetzloe:

“Mr. Sharpe’s election provides a barometer for the November election," Guetzloe said. “If he is defeated in the primary, we think that will give us continued impetus to win in November.”

 -- So Guetzloe, how's that "impetus" workin' out for ya today?

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• Community plans could lose clout - Tbo.com

Tweets by TBARTA

• TBARTA Board hears from CSX about rail placement and cooperation - http://bit.ly/dq1M9m
• Great idea! Local transit providers need mobile apps to provide better service info! http://bit.ly/a1cbhn

Tweets by Hartline

• Please sign APTA's petition to help secure a long-term transport. bill that increases invest. in public transportation. http://bit.ly/ckuWZC
• USF Students: Like checking in on Foursquare? Visit www.gohart.org/usf for details on how u can win a $100 package from Univer. Mall & HART!

The Rant

Those opposed to transportation choice in Hillsborough County made a mid-summer dispatch from their hidden cave hideout to advise Hillsborough County residents that the vote in November would be to spend $300 million for a rail system in Tampa.  PolitiFact, an online project by the St. Pete Times to sort out these assertions more scientifically than one may appreciate from websites like mine (or theirs), gave that loony scare tactic a "barely true" rating. 

If it helps to delineate more precisely, feel free, then, to call the opponent's assertion an outright lie.

Actually, the article agrees that the "cost" of light rail around $300 million might be (loosely) correct under some circumstances (and again, the word "cost" somehow implying "of no value" - which is in and of itself completely bogus anyway).  But the article clarifies that the investment tax will not actually be going 100 percent to rail.  Rather it will fund bus and road projects in the more comprehensive agenda that most people want and expect.  Second, the entire rail project will not be limited to the city of Tampa nor was Tampa capable of authorizing the referendum in the first place - Hillsborough County Commissioners, to their credit, did that. 

In reality, the completed rail system, not the starter line that kicks all this off (and not the high speed rail rail system coming to Tampa which is something completely different), will actually reach as far as New Tampa, Brandon, and Town 'N Country. 

From the comments (TR Motorman Joe):

I think the opposition will be using the 300M figure so it is important that supporters to emphasize that figure won't happen for 10 years, it won't ONLY be for rail, and the rail won't ONLY be for those that live east of 275.

HART says they expect the average burden of the tax to be about $12 dollars per month per family. If Tampa's light rail resembles Charlotte's from a development perspective, operations are paid 30% from farebox revenue and about 70% from subsidies. However, the property tax increases from homes and businesses along the route make the 70% subsidy a wash...in a down economic market.

Light Rail is both a transportation and redevelopment initiative. (emphasis added)

The successful synchronization with rail projects in Pinellas will likely even mean a trans-bay rail system.  The vote in November will of course result in an action horizon that involves the starter line that will either connect downtown to the airport, or to the USF area.  But from there, the transformation to county and regional reach begins.

Shame on the secret organization behind those mailings, and shame on the elitist Sam Rashid.

Tampa Rail Express Links

News

• Post-primary disorder - Creative Loafing Tampa
• Local elections include transportation questions - Land Line Magazine
• Commissioners White and Sharpe: A tale of two races, and voters who had enough - Tampabay.com
• Transit tax foe Sam Rashid says it's $300 million for rail in Tampa - PolitiFact
• Tampa ranks last in economic study - Brandon News and Tribune
• Hills. Co. group opposes penny tax for light rail - Central Florida News 13
• PolitiFact: Transit tax foe barely true on benefit for Tampa, suburbs - Tampabay.com
• Light Rail Could Hinge on Dealing with CSX - WUSF 89.7 News

Tweets by TBARTA

• Area roads pose danger to peds and bikers - http://bit.ly/ayRpTn - we need more bike lanes, sidewalks, and connective public transit!
• Pinellas Realtors Org (PRO) - Why realtors should support light rail - http://bit.ly/9S2q35
• THE Bus vital to region's mass transit - http://bit.ly/bZAk0a - Hernando Today letter to the editor

Tweets by Hartline

• Welcome back to school Hillsborough County students! Parents - you now get your lives back. Well, for a few months anyway. ;)
• Do you know all the ways to find us on the web? Check out our 'Web Wednesday' In Transit blog post. http://bit.ly/dbjPPW
• To be... or not to be? The question is.. Shakespeare performed on a bus/train - entertaining or annoying? http://bit.ly/d5sVmt #curious
• Tomorrow, 8/27 - Purchase a 10 pack of 1-day unlimited fare cards and get the 2nd one 1/2 off - (not valid online). #sweetdeal
• "This is about more than just light rail". http://bit.ly/aWmfCA
• "It is sad that we are one of the last major metropolitan cities investing in this concept and plan." http://bit.ly/aTSII0
• Want to catch up on all your Central Florida transportation news this week? It's a BINGO! http://bit.ly/d6gypc

Tweets by Moving Hillsborough Forward

• Join us tonight for a TeleTown Hall in West Tampa! http://fb.me/zPwUfXPD
• Supporter Report from the Field: Been on I-4 for 15min, moved less than 1/2 mile, it's time to Move Hillsborough Forward

The Rant

Moving Hillsborough Forward has called to action a commentary brigade via its Twitter feed.  So, in addition to making my comment at the TampaBay.com editorial in question, Without Mass Transit, Tampa Bay Businesses, Economy May Face Slow Death, I also dropped in on the Tampa Rail Facebook page to give Tampa Rail Group members the heads up.  

There, on its wall, I found a link someone cited to a "fan" page of those who oppose a livable and commercially viable Tampa Bay region.   The  group calls itself "No Tax For Trax", and, get this, despite some clear investment in its off-Facebook fortress site, it has attracted (snicker) just 21 fans. 

Hillsborough County Residents don't want rail!  Well, these 21 Hillsborough County residents don't, anyway.

There's your awesome roar against rail folks.

By contrast nearly all venues representing a pro-transit platform number in at least the hundreds.  The Tampa Rail FB group, for instance, leads the pack at a whopping 359 members (and, as an aside, its Twitter feed has 513 presumably pro-rail followers).  Bring Light Rail to Hillsborough County follows up with 241 members.  We have to assume that this is a microcosm that projects into the thousands if not tens of thousands of voters when overlaid on the population at large.

I'm making fun, perhaps.  But it does go to show that the "anti-tax" people are a small, tightly controlled group, who remain secretive and inaccessible if not vocal and determined to spread their dangerous propaganda.  It doesn't appear for instance, that the No Tax for Tracks blog even allows comments to its postings, which is something I find atypical of such ideological websites.   Like the strong dictatorships in North Korea or Cuba, public feedback is considered intolerable and a gross infringement against the State.   Yep, that's how these people think.  All (snicker) 21 of them.

It's encouraging but we should not become complacent.  There's a real tendency to believe the vote for transit in Hillsborough County will succeed in November, because inertly, we all believe that good things take care of themselves.  We believe Jesus or the gods we pray to will take care of this for us if only to beat back the evil and insidious bad seeds that lurch their way about on Earth.  We forget, other closed and "secret" groups like the KKK flourished in their day despite the evil they represented.

Polling booths are, in a sense, mechanisms.  Sometimes a radical group can take advantage of the self-assurance of the good, or, apathy of the general, to produce an "energetic majority" during elections.  The commentary brigade that prompted this posting in fact, was to counter-address the dominant role these 2 dozen or so people play on local media message boards.  Drop-ins to these boards are actually led to believe by this orchestration that there is a fierce anti-rail investment sentimentality in the county.   Just 21 welfare-dependent types like Ralph-Hughes can sit around all day and pull this false perception off in short order.  What all this means in the end is that Facebook membership counts mean squat.  It's the votes that count and the votes Hillsborough County pro-transit residents must produce.

I encourage everyone to look at their content as linked to above if only to shore up their conclusive support for transit.

The Rant

I mentioned this in my previous post - Hartline has launched an official transit blog dedicated to Hillsborough County, thereby settling once and for all any issue of topic dominance among local Tampa bloggers in regards to mass transit.  I bring it up again now because Hart issued a formal press release today which makes it official by most standards.  You can visit the blog at http://gohart.blogspot.com/.  The site is part of an apparent wider effort to go horizontal in social media to promote local transit and get people talking about local transit.

In addition to this, one thing I absolutely wanted to make sure that I caught up on post-content drought is an article I spotted via Time Magazine online "Can High Speed Rail Get on Track".  The piece discusses the prospects of high speed rail in America and makes mention of President Obama's visit to Tampa to launch just that.

Finally, I notice that Mark Sharpe has picked up an unexpected opponent for his bid to seek re-election.  Some members of Mark's party have denounced his support and leadership in the advance of mass transit in Hillsborough, but remember, these vocal lots tend not to be actual Republicans but rather borderline libertarians who rellish the tax-cheating (read: state-welfare-dependent,  it turns out) Ralph Hughes, or, hot-head Brian Blair.  If you are a real Republican, however, you probably already support him for pursuing what makes good business and fiscal sense in fighting for transit, or should.  He's going to need all that he can get!

I have “missed” so many milestone moments in Hillsborough County’s path to rail in the past 2 months I disgust myself. I know, I know, the irony must be as astounding to you all as it is to me. It must be astounding that at a time when the federal government, Obama himself in fact, launches true high speed rail right from Tampa; that when when the light rail vote this blog has hoped and longed for, finally materializes; that when the first streetcar extension linking downtown to Tampa’s new residential districts rolls out its track bedding and raises actual catenary poles on Franklin Street; that when, in general, every star lines up perfectly for Tampa's urban rail future. It must be astounding that this site, one that for over 10 years as these things were happening only in the hypothetical plane, that has beat the drum and hailed the eventuality of urban rail in Tampa in all that time, that, at this pinnacle moment when it’s all actually happening, suddenly clams up.

Yes, I know: WTF?

Well, long time visitors know the crux of the reason is that I left Tampa nearly 2 years ago to come live and work in New York City. Try as I might to lessen the impact of 1,000 miles distance, ground and local content based on spot effort has predictably dried up. From my vantage point, I only learn what’s happening in regards to urban rail development in Tampa from the web itself - I am no longer divided in content meat between something like a glorified RSS feeder for existing web content on the subject, and a content source - the latter which I could be when I showed up at important meetings or took pictures of work in progress or other events. Rather, Tampa Rail is virtually 100 percent the former now with a dash of my voice here and there, and all less in volume at that. By the time you see anything here you’ve more than likely seen or heard about it in the local MSM, or, even websites operated by the stakeholders themselves (which by the way is an excellent thing). I admit, it’s all a challenge, and, unfortunately, it’s one I’m not meeting well. There’s just not a lot of motivation in chasing headlines compared to originating them.

The other huge reason is the fact that, as the issue of rail has heated up, those stakeholder websites I mentioned have multiplied. This month, for instance, HART released its own transit blog (which includes a shout out to TR in its latest entry by the way, kewl!). To put it simply, the social media PR specialists - people who do websites and blogs for “real” - have moved in to manage the rail message directly, particularly as it relates to the current tax campaign. Much as I would have ever hoped, all the transit sites involved in this evolution are rich with regular content that dwarf even the online content of the previously energetic anti-transit crowd. What this all means of course is that, at the same time, it leaves this site much less relevant.

I’m not giving up, however. I’ll do no such drastic thing as that while I’m still trying to settle in and maintain employment in the big city. Now more than ever when you think about it, is a good time to re-orient and take my time doing so. The stakeholders and your local media are doing just fine propelling Tampa to its greater future!

That's right everyone, I've been away from the TR a bit thanks to another important project of mine.  I'm still watching things from afar, though.  Meanwhile, I'd say all the major pro-rail outlets have everything covered.

As for my project, anyone who knows me knows that I develop little "prototype" web applications for the sheer fun and creationism of it.  The one that has been keeping me extra busy this past month has been Headline Prophet. 

www.headlineprophet.com

Headline Prophet, Great for the Planet -- bad for Tampa Rail, sorry -- I still love you! :)

It's a web site where you can discuss news before it happens.  For instance, news like groundbreaking for Hillsborough County light rail!

Drop by the site and play the game.  The hard part is over and I'll be back here pretty soon!