Find your HART!

As I prepare to leave Tampa, I find myself doing things I have not done before. My first times riding the HART bus have been quaint and worthwhile. Look for the video recently uploaded by Julio Rodriguez to see me on the bus! Cheaper than convenient Lyft/Uber, less stressful than driving through wild local traffic, and better than walking around in Florida’s abysmally hot weather, taking the bus could be an opportunity to enjoy a cultural experience while not worrying about driving home after enjoying a day in Ybor.

Problem is, the HART bus system is underfunded, and thus does not operate as it should. Buses do not run 24/7 and do not have as many buses as it could have. We need our elected officials to expand and improve HART, as well as ferries and commuter rail. Please support candidates and initiatives to bolster local public transit—we cannot and should not rely on cars, especially as the Tampa area and highway system grows into vehicular oblivion. Consider taking the bus, and find your HART in Tampa!

— Asher

Stogie's letter to the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART)

The whole purpose of public transportation is to serve the public and your fare changes not only do not serve the public but they make it impossible for a large portion of your patrons, the working poor, to use your services. I am speaking for them. These are people who can not maintain a bank account or have the internet access needed to put funds into a Flamingo card and who do not live close enough to a facility that accepts money for a Flamingo card. Many of them have to transfer two or more times to get to work and back home every day and they have to beg for or borrow the money one dollar at a time to pay the fares. If they need $8 or more for those transfers, anything short of that $8 does them no good at all. It means they lose their jobs. Even borrowing enough to pay for a $4 day pass, something HART no longer accepts, is often difficult but certainly more possible than paying a separate $2 fare each time they have to transfer to a different bus. You HAVE to realize that many of your patrons live by a thread and the changes you have made to your fare system do them a great disservice. I am a staunch advocate for public transportation who relies solely on the HART bus system. I have had many discussions with other HART passengers and I know that doing away with day passes is a great concern for many of them. My comments here are not derived from conjecture but from first hand knowledge. By my own personal observations while riding the Hart buses every day a great many of your riders utilize the day passes and do not approve of your doing away with them. Your fare system worked and to change it only because it may be more convenient for you to no longer have to process those day passes is a horribly misguided idea. It would mean you are making the changes to benefit yourselves at the expensive of those who rely most on your service. You MUST go back to your previous fare system if you expect to remain what can be considered public transportation. Sure, there are charitable organizations who can help SOME of those working poor but your fare changes have only placed one more hurdle in their way.

I am not only an advocate for public transportation but I am also a writer for a local internet news service here in the Tampa Bay area. I have the means to broadcast this message to the public in this area and I intend to do just that.

Btw, the link you have posted on many of your bus stops that patrons are to use to submit comments about your fare changes is to a web page that does not exist.

Commissioner Pat Kemp Gets Her Buses

HART now will have our first electric buses with $2.7 million in s federal DOT grant.

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"I've worked for four years to get HART its first electric buses and for some time met with strong resistance. I couldn't be more thrilled. HART needs go all electric -- saving on costly fuel and greenhouse gases. Transit agencies across the country are going 100% renewable. HART needs to do so as well!" Commissioner Pat Kemp

Tampa HART

Hillsborough County leaders are drawing up plans to remake the HART bus system into an expansive agency that can oversee construction of countywide transportation projects ang the authority to build roads and rail and create new bus routes.....more

Commissioners Kevin Beckner, Mark Sharpe and Sandy Murman all nominated HART.

Mayor Bob likes the idea, so do we. If anything is right around here it is them. 

“When you’re talking about transportation, for me it’s logical to think HART, why would you recreate the wheel and create a whole new agency.” Kevin Beckner

The Stogie is Bared from HART

Back when I lived in Ybor Heights I tried to get on     Metro Rapid with a Pro Palestinian t-Shit on and I was refused service. The driver said I was Soiled. I made no fuzz got off and waited for next one. Today, I was wearing this shirt that I have worn many times on the bus....I was waiting on Bus #1 at a school cross walk with gourd there who saw it all.

When the next bus came again I was refused service.

I asked to talk to a supervisor, they sent a security guard. I told her I wasn't talking to her and to send a deputy. He and the guard spoke. He told me that this happened because I was Soiled. And I was barred from HART, if I ever try to get on a bus I will be charged with tresspassing. 

Is this the word HART uses when you wear shirts they dont like?

I am done with HART. I have tried to help them for many years on this blog.

Closed my Flamingo account, I live in a walkable hood and can walk for everything I need. Locations further I will use UBER.

Soiled HART!

Two Stogie fans saw what happened to me with HART. 

So they donated this great bike. Thank you Andy and Marie for this great gift.

Maybe some day the city will get competent people running HART and we can have a desent bus service in this town! 

Demand HART Buy Clean Electric Buses In Ybor City

September 9, 2019 at 5:30 PM

Monday night, come ask HART to spend YOUR tax dollars on new buses that are truly clean. Ask HART to buy clean, quiet, zero emission electric buses, not more fracked

(natural) gas buses.

1201 E 7th Ave, Ybor City INFO

Nice HART Driver Found

I know this blog is always picking on HART drivers. But I think we found a nice one. Leaving the Marion Transit Center the other day I got on the #360LX. After greeting the driver as I always do, I actually got one back. This woman was kind and polite, to everyone that entered her bus my entire trip. I did not get her pic or her name but I did get her 
operator number. 

#4047

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One more thing.

As you can see in pic, this bus isn't going dowtown,

 it is downtown. Us old time riders know where this bus is going, but the new ones don't.  Before you go on your break at Marion please change your header to your next destination.  Thank you from all us deprived HART riders.

A HART Of Green

In celebration of Earth Day on Friday, April 22, HART is offering FREE rides on HART routes with a buddy! Make a friend, catch a ride and go GREEN! Promotion excludes HARTplus and Streetcar services,
and is valid ONLY on April 22.
info

HART bus service fare-free to help with transportation after Milton

 If you need a ride as you recover from Hurricane Milton, HART has got you covered.

Effective immediately, HART Bus, HARTPlus, and HARTFlex are operating fare-free until Oct. 21.

MORE

HART Riders

Meet Barbie
She Has Been A HART Rider For 10 Years.
She Rides The Bus Becouse She Can Not Afford The Cost Of Owning A Vehicle.
Go HART!

Community Forum on Transportation - February 13, 2019

Opening comments by Commissioners Mariella Smith, Kimberly Overman and Pat Kemp (left to right)
 

Please forgive me if the video and sound are slightly out of sync in these videos. In the rush to get this post out today, I neglected to preview the final edited versions of the videos. The sync should be close enough that you won't be distracted from the message.

Two days ago a Community Forum on Transportation was held at the Seminole Heights Library. It was hosted by the Sierra Club, a well recognized environmental advocacy organization that has been around since 1892. Considering the critical impact our new transportation initiative will have on the immediate and long range plans for transportation within Hillsborough County, I expected a huge turnout of both community activists, or advocates if you prefer, and public officials directly charged with implementing new plans for improving transportation here . I saw neither.

Questions and Answers

There were about 50 people representing the interests of the public and a grand total of 3 public officials on the panel. In this first serious attempt to establish a line of communication between our government officials and the public, of the 7 members of the County Commission, only 3 bothered to answer the open invitation to attend, Commissioners Mariella Smith, Kimberly Overman and Pat Kemp. Of the 14 members of the HART Board of Directors, only 3 members attended and coincidentally they were, Mariella Smith, Kimberly Overman and Pat Kemp. Of the 7 members of the City Council of Tampa, not one councilperson showed up. In the audience, there was 1 candidate for the upcoming election for mayor, Topher Morrison, and 2 candidates for councilmen, Walter L. Smith II and John Godwin. This dismal turnout of county government officials and candidates seems to me a clear indication that, despite the rhetoric to the contrary, the large majority of present and future hopeful officials have their own agenda of how they intend to spend this new transportation windfall and have no serious interest in the wants or needs the public, who voted for the initiative and is financing it in full. I have to add that John Turanchik, the son of Ed Turanchik, candidate for mayor, spent some time outside the event handing out flyers promoting Ed's "Go Plan", his agenda for transportation. John didn't attend the event itself. If your interest is in the people who actually rely on the bus system in Hillsborough County, I can only add that, when the host of the event asked for a show of hands of how many people in the audience had taken a bus to get to the event, only 1 person, myself, raised his hand. When he asked how many WOULD have taken a bus if there was one available to get them there, nearly half the audience raised their hands. I think the host was trying to make a point of how lacking our bus system is by asking these questions but I, personally, interpreted the responses completely differently. I found the responses rather odd because the HART MetroRapid has a stop 3 blocks from the event and I find it difficult to believe that I alone among the 50 or so attendees of the forum live near enough to a bus line capable of getting me to the event. I hope you get my point.

I also hope that, in the near future, I will see a real concerted effort to establish a working relationship between our government officials and the citizens of Hillsborough County. I'd like to see the schools in the county handing out notices to their students, to take home to their parents, advertising upcoming forums in their school auditoriums. I'd like to see questionnaires on all the buses that can be filled out and returned to any driver, asking riders what they want from the new bus system and inviting them to future outreach events. I'd like to see an upsurge by the public, demanding of the county officials, who THEY elected and whose salaries they pay for, listen to their concerns about the future of the transportation system they are funding. I'd like to see an indication by our county representatives that they will at least make an effort to reach out to the public they supposedly represent. Voting for the transportation initiative is a fine example of talking the talk. County officials telling each other how important it is to establish a concerted program of community outreach is a fine example of talking the talk. I'm hoping to see many, many more of these people begin actually walking the walk......but I'm not holding my breath.

Finally, there are thousands of Hart patrons who rely on the buses to get back and forth to work or school every day and will continue to suffer a dismally broken bus system for at least another year thanks to a lawsuit, meant to completely undermine the intent of the transportation initiative, filed by the self-serving Commissioner Stacy White. Whether you are a Democrat, a Republican or any other political affiliation, you must know that Stacy White does not represent you and should not have a seat on our county commission. I urge everyone to keep this in mind when the elections come around next year.

Heartless HART

Where are the HART folks in 

the transit debate?

We understand they are probably doing the best they can with the money they get. But shouldn't they be trying to get more. Why the silence? Speak up, Buy more buses. Change the frequency from 20 minutes to 10. Upgrade the transfer centers. (The bathrooms at Marion transit center is a start.). Give your drivers some lessons in manners. 

We graded some of them for attitude.

Very Nice
#4309
#1488
#2447

NICE

#2384
#4090
#2330
#2330

NOT SO NICE

#3526
#1817
#1159

ASSHOLES

#4125

#4214

Katharine Eagan you are suppose to be the leader.

 Where is your voice?  If you don't speak up, we will.

HART Meeting Monday, featuring Jarrett Walker

Jarrett Walker (HumanTransit.org), the nation's transit system guru, will be at the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit facility on 7th Ave. Monday to talk about how we can move forward to transform transit in Hillsborough County. Jarrett did the redesigns for Seattle, Portland, Houston, Raleigh, Richmond, Columbus, now New York, to name a few.

Place: 1201 E. 7th Avenue 3rd floor
Time: 9:00 AM  Monday  January 7th

If you can't make it to the meeting, you can watch the video later at the HART YouTube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/user/harttransit

PSTA and HART talk ups and downs Tampa Bay transit

For the latest episode of The Skinny on WMNF Tampa, Whitney Fox, Director of Communications & Marketing at Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA), and Justin Willits, the new Director of Planning and Scheduling Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (HART), talk about ups, down, frequency, funding and more.....MORE

Tampa Streetcar will remain fare-free for another year

Huge news for the historic, and nationally renowned Tampa Streetcar! The Hillsborough Transit Authority (HART) just announced the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) has awarded HART a Commuter Assistance grant totaling $700,000. The FDOT grant will permit the TECO Line Streetcar to remain fare-free for an additional year....MORE

Local Hero Eileen Hart

Eileen Hart wiped tears from her eyes minutes after she gave back her Moral Courage Award at today's Hillsborough County Commission meeting. Two weeks ago, the commission voted to rename the award, which is given to citizens who challenge government, for controversial political activist Ralph Hughes.......here
Puppets Pay Tribute To Their Master

Congratulations Florida Representative Dianne Hart

2020 People First 

Report Card

Florida state legislators who voted to put people first instead of powerful special interests

Where the GOP average is 50%

Ms. Hart got 

HERE

HELP HER HERE

HART Going Backwards

Starting today get ready to walk a little longer to get to your bus stop. The folks at HART who don't ride the bus have decided to close bus stops all over town.

Images by Russell Hires

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If your bus is even coming, 20% of bus routes will be cut.

Walking, it's good for your health! 

HART Riders

Meet Chris
She Is From Arizona. She Moved Here 3 Weeks Ago To Be With Her Parents.
Says They Have A Great Mass Transit System In Phoenix.
Go HART!