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About Tampa Rail
Tampa Rail is devoted to ongoing commentary and exhibition of Tampa and Hillsborough
County Florida's rail transit development; primarily editorializing and disseminating
from an advocacy viewpoint in an attempt to galvanize material public support
and imagination for some form of a fixed guide way transportation solution.
As of 2007, the primary focal point of TR is a light rail system as outlined in the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit's (HART) Tampa Rail Project, now with a regional agenda. It also aggressively covers and supports the Teco Line Streetcar system, an approximate 2.5 mile line near downtown Tampa. However, all fixed guide way modal technologies are mulled and eagerly discussed including a (very) hypothetical subway or monorail network. In general, Tampa Rail also pays careful attention to issues and topics related to general Tampa mass transit, pedestrian accomodation and promotion, and urban development.
bus in August 2007
Tampa Rail is David Pinero
Tampa Rail is interchangeably referred in shorthand as "TR" throughout its online dictum. But either way, it's David Pinero. Its current voice and pace are generated by myself, and, under the auspice of my solely owned proprietary business identity, Dave the Web Guy. It is a non-profit-dependent enterprise reflecting my developed passion for the rapid urbanization of Tampa through equally rapid transit maturity.
I was inspired to begin a project like this out of outrage against web content put out by anti-rail personalities of the mid-90s, but continued on as my appreciation and excitement for Tampa's future became more actually realized.
As a single-man operation, TR and its sister effort, the Tampa Rail Community, operate on the basis of the sole human observer model for its information consumption and dissemination. As a result Tampa Rail can be, or not be, a breaking news site. It can be, or not be, a depot of accurate political analysis. It is, only, an interpretation of observed activity through the eyes of one individual and re-parlayed at a pace of the same. I believe this approach has led to Tampa Rail's success as an inquisitive blog and website, and helps to keep it that way.
Ten Years
TR has published for 10 years under a myriad of title variations but mainly as the Tampa Transit Train Page and then Tampa Rail and TampaRail.Org. It was originally hosted and served through an America Online consumer account beginning in 1997. I am proud to consider Tampa Rail one of the area's most original and consistent blogging efforts by a single individual in the time since, and do my best to maintain it as a model project for others who may so be inspired.
Tampa Rail Traffic
Statistical traffic has never been tightly assessed prior to recent times. However, a simple report based on the current generation of logs demonstrates that Tampa Rail has received, on average, a modest 40 real visits each day since 2006. In all, it has catered to 23,500 unique visitors, dishing up 66,500 page views among them. Visitors run the gambit from stray Google searches to regular visits by fellow rail transit enthusiasts, city, transit, public official offices, and private development entities directly involved with Tampa and Hillsborough County's development future.
The Mechanics of Tampa Rail
TR runs using the Battle Blog blogging engine. This is a custom blogging application that I myself wrote and even distribute at BattleBlog.com. The engine encourages non-authenticated promotion and demotion of content, a conceptual precursor to sites like Digg that have since become wildly popular. Battle Blog is the only engine designed from the ground up with this interactivity in mind.
Battle Blog is scripted using ASP Vbscript, though an earlier version relied on Macromedia's ColdfFusion.
This incarnation of TR uses MSSQL as its database back-end. Previous incaranations relied on pure static HTML, and later, MS Access. Its database and HTML pages are all hosted by the ever spectacular folks at HostMySite - which I highly recommend to anyone seeking a web based presence.
When linking to Tampa Rail, it is a good idea to always use the actual domain www.tamparail.org. This domain which may wind up one day being hosting directly, will nevertheless always forward to the correct TR destination.
The Tampa Rail Logo
Tampa Rail has never officially developed a Tampa Rail logo. However, the Ybor City Stogie generated its own logo for link-back purposes to TR, which the blogmaster subsequently granted permission for Tampa Rail to use. Thanks to the Ybor City Stogie, Tampa Rail now uses the following as its ad-hoc logo.
Other Links Related to Tampa Rail's Profile
- Ten Years of Tampa Rail, a Reflection
- Tampa Rail 2003 - 2005
- David Pinero's Personal Web Page
- Dave the Web Guy
- Advertise on Tampa Rail
- Contact Tampa Rail
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| Tampa Rail Comment Brigade |
What is the Brigade?
Many Tampa area news outlets allow for open public commentary in comment sections associated with indidvidual stories.
The anti-transportation choice lot in Hillsborough County has long dominated these high profile convsersations in any story covering the advance of rail, and indeed, any pro urban living vision story for Hillsborough County that happens to run. The Tampa Rail Comment Brigade consists of TR readers like you willing to show up and punch back. Retort, refute, bury, and make clear to the majority casual readers: Support for rail in Hillsborough County is the dominant reality.
