I thought this was cool. Henry tipped the group off yesterday to the fact that a designer has been chosen to conceptually design Tampa International Airport's light rail station. The selected designer is none other than the same entity which designed New York City's first subway system, Parsons Brinckerhoff. William Barclay Parsons was the chief designer of it, and he subsequently founded Parsons Brinckerhoff.



William Barclay Parsons. A historic icon of the New York City subway system is coming to Tampa!

This isn't just some loosely interpreted PR fluff by the Parsons Brinckerhoff people; I checked this out and it's true! My confirmation site is here, but you can of course do a standard Google search to see the same.

So, you have to hand it to that Louis Miller. When he goes world class, he goes world class. No messin' around here.

Louis is part of the local business community movement to bring urban rail to Tampa. So optimistic and sure of its eventuality, he's long cornered off part of TIA's expansion zones exclusively for an urban rail thruway. Like us at TR he's banking on light rail, but failing, or in lieu of it, he's also figuring on connecting to an intercity rail system (such as Florida High Speed Rail). We can preach, hope, and imagine, light rail here in Tampa all we want. But for the moment, TIA's concrete plans and actions are the best votes of confidence that our hopes are, in fact, right on track.