Yesterday was Thursday and I enjoyed a rare opportunity to use the streetcar line midday. I was actually going downtown to meet the top Tampa blogger for lunch (a lunch which turned into one of the most engaging conversations I've had in awhile on the subject of blogging. As all you locals know, he knows his stuff. I've been left with much food for thought, particularly in regards to the future of TR).

This trip meant I could actually implement the streetcar system as a true connector to the downtown core, sans the actual existence of the Whiting Street extension.

Off to lunch downtown.

In talking it over with certain individuals close to the line, I learned it isn't looking good for the extension, the streetcar's regular steady operational schedule, or, worse, both. It's been two weeks now since HART agreed to give the Tampa Historic Streetcar board a chance to come up with a business plan compelling enough to change minds at HART's executive level. A chance for HART to change its mind regarding whether to use $900,000 already laboriously secured in the spirit of the extension, or, to consider the composition of any such plan so implausible that the $900,000 gets farted out the back end of a bus in about, oh, two seconds.

Boardings to and from the STP were brisk today - a Thursday at midday.

Already Pressed to Save Money

In any event, what most people don't realize is that the streetcar is already running abnormally around its own schedule in an effort to save money. Apparently it has been doing so for awhile now. The conductor on my trip reminded me "20 minute intervals" as I got off at the Southern Transportation Plaza, to which I shook my head and thanked.

Turns out, this bit of information was actually spottable in the board meeting packets, which I have obviously not been paying enough attention to given my late input on the Whiting Street funding raid.

...And it May Get Worse, Has Anyone Told the Commuter?

They've not only been forced to change the running schedule, they're possibly about to whack off entire days of operation midweek. In contemplating this, it became all the more torturous when a young lady boarded the streetcar in Centro wearing a Bennigans work shirt and her hair pressed back. She was clearly on her way to her job as waitress or hostess at the Channelside Bennigans. This was confirmed to me when she did, in fact, get off at Channelside and marched off in Bennigan's direction.

What was obvious to me about the woman was that she was used to using the streetcar to get to work. That ride was not her first. It was one of many. One of a routine. The streetcar was her part and parcel for getting to her job. Many of you will recall I met another woman many months ago, doing the same thing going in the other direction. Smattered evidence that demonstrates, slowly, people are climbing on board and starting to show a preference that no doubt represents a microcosm of the streetcar's commuting potential.

So what do we tell this woman in just a few weeks? "Sorry, Monday through Wednesday, find another way to get to work."

Mind you, of course the Bennigan woman can find another way and likely will. However, fracturing the streetcar operating schedule to aggravate away all the earliest adapters who actually use the system for real transportation is a mortifying consequence of the streetar's sudden stepchild predicament. Looking over the sparring taking place between HART and the THS, you get the feeling it isn't even about economics. HART suddenly seems to want out of its arrangement because of some philisophical angst about providing choice rider options. And if that's the case, there are bigger potential problems looming.

Riding the streetcar back to Ybor, people are loving it.

Take that woman again. Why should that woman try the new BRT buses? The second the new director lends any kind of credence to the next anti-tax monkey to show up at a meeting bitching about taxes and all them gab-dum do-gooders demanding transportation choice, HART will shelve BRT too. Or, perhaps, make it so that the BRT only runs every other Tuesday and Thursday, alternating between a schedule of hours from 8:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., and a 8:45 p.m. to 11:52 p.m., each week respectively.

-- I mean, seriously folks.

Wait a Minute, is HART Really Behind the Streetar These Days?

Granted, it's not like something cannot give. We can do prudent things like reduce operating hours to try and save the streetcar's very existence for the resident-rich future, and maybe get the extension done to boot. Or, we can skip the extension, and keep her steady eddie on her "real" running schedule. Great, if people were making that choice in good faith. Why, that sort of consideration either way would be one thing.

But suspicions are, it seems, that something more sinister is going on. Something that goes beyond bad-tasting medicine.

Could HART be trying put its relationship with the streetcar to sleep, period?

If so, that would be a huge mistake. Folding up support for the streetcar and suddenly pretending like it's somehow a bad idea (ignoring the fact it's the most popular thing HART ever involved itself in), is tantamount to cowarding and whithering mass transit as a whole. This when the idea is to build confidence in mass transit - keep people on board even after they acclimate to the new gas prices (I say acclimate because, well, y'all know they aren't actually coming down right?); it isn't to confirm what a here-today-gone-tommorow operation it can be. The Bennigan woman isn't going to "not ride the streetcar" ever again. She isn't going to "ride HART", period. It's only 2 miles, but once she climbs back into her car to make that same trip, she'll be reminded that while expensive and inconvenient, at least it runs more than three days a week.

Big stuff is planned for the region, and all of this begs the question, is HART up to being part of that evolution, or isn't it? Yes, the BRT is cool. It can be a leg up to light rail even. But dissing the streetcar system, its people, and its vision, sends a pretty big message about how forward HART is going to be in providing stable and concrete transporation choice to people beyond the transit captive.