The SunRunner, a bus route which runs from downtown St. Petersburg to the beach, will now have to negotiate car traffic on Pasadena Avenue after the state stepped in.
The Tampa Bay Times reported in June that the Florida Department of Transportation was conducting what it called a routine review of lane repurposing projects around the state, including the SunRunner. What makes the SunRunner unique in Pinellas County is that its route has its own dedicated lane.
Whit Blanton, executive director of transportation planning agency Forward Pinellas, said the local transportation secretary told him, “worst-case scenario,” the SunRunner could lose part of its lane along Pasadena Avenue.
Now it appears that worst-case scenario has come to pass on a small portion of the service’s route. Pasadena Avenue is a state road. St. Petersburg controls much of the SunRunner’s route on First Avenues North and South, which will continue to have a rust-red dedicated lane.
The SunRunner launched in 2022 under the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority, which billed it as an efficient way to bypass traffic through St. Petersburg to St. Pete Beach. The buses come every 15 minutes, and traffic lights are timed to turn green as the teal-and-yellow buses approach.
But losing the dedicated lane on Pasadena Avenue could force Pinellas to return $22 million to the federal government.
“If we don’t have a reasonable lane that’s dedicated for buses and cars to turn, then it takes the ‘R’ out of BRT (bus rapid transit),” Darden Rice, chief planning and community affairs officer for the Pinellas transit authority, previously said. “There’s nothing rapid about a bus stuck in traffic.”
After its launch, the SunRunner quickly provoked the ire of local Republican officials.
“We all see the near-empty or completely empty buses running all over the county,“wrote Barbara Haselden, who led county efforts against light rail and now sits on the Pinellas transit agency board. First Avenues North and South were “the most functional route across the peninsula in South Pinellas, and (the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority) has ruined it in their attempt to stay relevant as their ridership tanks over the years.”
Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis joined the chorus of complaints.
“There are potentially local governments throughout Florida who … (are) anti-commuter and even wanting to close lanes so that people are so miserable that they just abandon commuting altogether,” he said.
Another SunRunner detractor, Rep. Linda Chaney, R-St. Pete Beach, is holding a press conference today to celebrate the SunRunner lane in South Pasadena opening to car traffic.
Chaney introduced a bill last year that commissioned studies on projects that removed lanes for cars. That bill also resulted in the state transportation department raising the ridership standard for bus lane repurposing projects, preempting a SunRunner successor called the Spark from taking over a lane.
DeSantis pointed to that bill as a device that would “prevent localities from agenda-motivated lane reductions to force people out of their cars.”
This is a developing story. Check back at tampabay.com for updates.