A lane on Pasadena Avenue is now open to cars after being off-limits to regular traffic.

SOUTH PASADENA, Fla. — Florida state representative Linda Chaney announced the dedicated bus and turn lane on Pasadena Avenue will now be open to all traffic. That lane went into place in 2022 when the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority opened the SunRunner.

On Tuesday, crews were removing signs that designated the right lane on Pasadena Avenue for buses, bikes, and right turns only. While some believe the change will help ease congestion, others say the dedicated lane served an important purpose.

Rep. Chaney noted bus ridership is low, and the dedicated bus and bike lane is a headache for drivers. 

“Today, you the taxpayers, get your road back,” Rep. Chaney said. “Parents just trying to get their kids where they need to go and emergency responders just trying to navigate these streets face delays and risks that no one should have to face,” Rep. Chaney said.

St. Pete Beach resident Claudine Reece said traffic has been worse since a fire destroyed the Dolphin Village Publix. 

“So for instance, every single resident on the beach now has to come to the grocery store. You have to access one of those two entries and this is going to be great to free up that and get a lot of less bottleneck traffic,” Reece said.

In 2024, Rep. Chaney backed HB 1301, requiring FDOT to study traffic congestion and safety before repurposing existing lanes.

“And what they found is a 50 percent increase in crashes annually, jumping from 36 to 54 annual crashes,” Rep. Chaney said.

PSTA said an FDOT study from 2023 shows there were no significant changes after the special lane was implemented. FDOT’s crash data management system reported more than 100 severe and fatal crashes in 2024 and 37 so far this year. 

“This impacts everybody. The reliability of the service, the safety for drivers. We’re going to go back to having more accidents before the bus and turn lanes were installed,” Franklin Alves, with Activate St. Pete, said. “We have so many other things we can have our representative focus on, but we’re celebrating making a service worse for people.”

Representative Chaney said it will take a couple of weeks for FDOT to remove the bus lane markings on the street.

10 Tampa Bay News reached out to FDOT to learn more about the crash history on this road, but at the time of publication, there has been no response.