Denver Meets Tampa

In less dramatic developments this morning, Mayor Pam is going to rub chins with Denver transit head Cal Marsella. In the Trib's Area Rail Message: It's Good for All, the similarities between the Denver FasTrack urban rail effort and that of Tampa Bay's are positively compared.

For the curious, here's Denver RTD's website, as well as a page dedicated to their FasTrack Project agendas.

It's worth taking a moment to remark and remind how Pam Iorio is keeping to her mass transit agenda as promised. What with TBARTA, the airport, and so on and so on. I admit that some were pessimistic down in Tampa Rail's Speech and Overt Mannerisms Analysis Department when she appeared to downgrade her mass transit rally cry some time ago, but it appears it was a crazy kinda silence that meant things were in the works behind the scenes. So, kudos to Pam!

As For All That Robbery Action



This individual was booked for robbery yesterday. See the booking record

Meanwhile, to return to yesterday's urban drama, two stories cover the event. The Trib's Tampa Police Find Pants In Search For Armed Robber and Channel 10's Police Search Channelside for Bleeding Bandit each afford a recount of the scare as it unfolded at the Channelside BP station.

The only obvious question at this point is, what happened? When I left for work they were checking out at least one suspicious individual at a local hospital. The picture above depicts a one James Matthews who was in fact booked into the HCSO jail for armed robbery yesterday. I have no confirmation that he is in fact the suspect in this case, but I'm wondering.

Update 11:59 11/14 - Tampa City has released a press release indicating that the above subject, James Matthews, is in fact the suspect captured and incarcerated in the Channelside BP robbery. See the release.

I'm elated that the crew of Zelda's is safe and sound, and that nobody else was evidently hurt - save for perhaps the bad guy.