I was doing a bit of random Google street viewing along the Teco Line Streetcar route (yeah it's the best I can do from up here!) and noticed that there's a construction project underway alongside the tracks on Franklin Street as you approach/depart the southern terminus.  Here's a cap from the view:

Does anyone know what this is going to be?  Any chance it will be a grocery store?

Here a link to the general area I'm talking about directly in Google.

Congratulations to the people of Tampa, and kudos to the hard working team at HART for launching MetroRapid.  When I was there this service was every bit the dream light rail is today.  I've panned both articles in the major Tampa newspapers and from what I'm gathering it was a tepid warm-up to the service but everyone seemed to able to dig up positive quotes among the early birds.  It seems people, for the moment anyway, woke up to "something is better about the bus system", and may have even spotted one of the new buses as they drove through a Nebraska Avenue intersection.  But they didn't breathlessly hike it out to one of the Park n' Ride stations to take a gander, let alone be one of the first riders.  Dammit people, I'd have.

Two burning questions I kept waiting for the writers to address:  Did that awesome traffic light thing work as expected?  My god, if that doesn't sell a rider nothing will.  Also, how close is the service to supplementing itself with GPS tracking online or at station kiosks so that folks can take the best advantage of the headways?  Bus rapid transit and GPS go together like peanut butter and jelly.  This blog still has a comment section, feel free to use it if you got an inside scoop on either question.

Nothing like this is doled without tying it into the evolution of Tampa light rail.  Not at this blog, and really, not even among the transit pros in Tampa where the system is billed as a way to develop transit demand and bank it all at the fed's doorstep one day in making the case for light rail.  If you want light rail in Tampa, you'll try this thing out and get everyone you know to try it out as if a light rail future depended on it.  It probably does. 

Links

• Hillsborough's New MetroRapid Bus System Off to a Slow Start
• HART Debuts Faster Bus Service

Video

ABC Action News Coverage of the MetroRapid Debut

Signal Prioritization Demonstrated, Courtesy HART You Tube Channel

I encountered a video this morning of a Korean man who charged an elevator's doors with his scooter and wound up pushing his way straight through them and into its shaft, to his death.  In it the man is seen just as he misses an opportunity to board the elevator with another passenger.  After the door closes he pulls back in his scooter, and mind you this is one of those medical scooters not a recreational one, and "charges" the elevator doors head on.  The first charge clearly breaks the door at the base as the door panels are seen swinging in on impact.  In the second charge the doors give way completely and the man floops to his untimely and most unfortunate doom.  This Mail Online article provides some additional detail.

The video isn't new and has apparently been circulating the Internet since 2010.  However, it all got me thinking of the incident at TIA where Chad Wolfe seemingly died in a similar situation - elevator doors manually broken followed by a fall into the shaft.  The video sheds some light on the fragility of elevator doors and in some way fills a gap of curiosity about this perplexing incident.

A thriving Channelside is crucial to the future of the Teco Streetcar System, it's part and parcel why the line ever came to be.  I haven't been there in a long time but from what I read all the way up here Channelside became a ghost town with a Hooters.  The Tampa Bay Tmes reports that 2 guys, Punit Shah and Santosh Govindaraju, want to buy the existing Channelside Bay Plaza (effectively what we are talking about when we talk about "Channelside"), leading to the quote that buying up distressed properties and turning them into something these guys do.  My question is, is that true?  What sort of track records do these guys actually have with this scenario?   What tank of a property have they turned around specifically in the past?  Not that I'm questioning or opposing anything here, more power to them no matter what the answer to that question is - even if it's just traditional PR optimism; I'm just trying to gauge what the chances are for success under new talent.  

Wow!  This blog has really been laying dormant and parts of it, due to some back-end changes related to other projects, have been broken.  The link rot is unbelievable, and just about every entry a part of the re-launch I did with a "national" perspective have archived out.  Not to worry on the latter issue, it became apparent to me that a national perspective wasn't going do it for me.  I love Tampa too much specifically, and in particular, it's quest, it's adventure if you will, toward rail.  How can I forsake that now?  

Well I'm fixing it all now so bear with me.  Among the changes, the landing page for Tampa Rail will no longer be this blog but a static resource page that will branch off to equally static information in a presentation model I refer to as "Cache" or "Caching".  The theory driving this is that others will provide a real-time voice, but I will provide an intermediate one, and specifically, I will provide it draped in my voice and with fresh content generated by spotters on the ground there.  I am still in New York City after all.  Trust me, this is going to work.

Shoot, I'll even kick things off with this stark and valid piece by Daniel Ruth, Stop Talking and Build a Rail Line.  Seriously right?  I remember when I started Tampa Rail back in the mid-90s.  Back then, to Ruth's point, I had to dig through CD-rom-based data at the USF library to come up with enough material to talk about on the very first iteration.  Search engines weren't quite rich then, and in any event, it wasn't like there was any rail talk or rail history.  But the point is, we were talking then, and we're still talking now.

He's being a little cynical however.  Tampa might still be "just talking", but don't forget, Tampa pushed itself to an actual vote  in 2010 and that my friends, was a miracle.  So it hasn't been all talk and no action - Tampa voted and it took a hit (thanks to Hillsborough outliers), so in essence Tampa isn't "starting" to talk or "talking empty", it's got its first vote under the belt and the chances get better with each that rail will pass.  All the talk before then served a purpose just like it will today.

By the way, when did Ruth start writing for the Tampa Bay Times?  (sigh) I miss so much down there now.