HART\u2019s Route 1<\/a> will need to start pulling out their wallets.<\/p>\nFor the last year, HART riders have been a part of an experiment, benefitting from a one-year pilot program where the city offered riders free fares on Route 1, which runs from downtown Tampa to USF, to see the appetite for public transit.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been a welcome change for riders like Eddie Perez, who have come to rely on the program. And he\u2019s not the only one, with ridership jumping by more than 45% since the pilot\u2019s implementation, making Route 1 the most popular route in HART\u2019s system.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you\u2019re in this situation, every penny counts,\u201d Perez said. \u201cThere\u2019s times where I go into the bus, and it\u2019s completely full. People that carry their stuff, people that do groceries, they got all their bags.\u201d<\/p>\n
But on Monday, the real test of demand begins when the city will begin charging for the route once again. Passengers will have to pay $2 per ride, but for frequent riders that use digital payments, their fees will be capped at $4 per day or $65 per month.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s bittersweet,\u201d said Dayne Lazarus, the Co-Founder of Transit Now Tampa Bay. \u201cWe’re disappointed that we’re not going to see the fare free be a permanent program for Route 1.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lazarus\u2019 organization was a part of the push ahead of Tampa\u2019s 2025 budget approval, working with councilwoman Lynn Hurtak to implement the free fare program. She says Transit Now Tampa Bay pushed the city to make it permanent \u2014 or to experiment with making the program free on other routes. But in September during the 2026 budget meetings, Tampa elected not to do so.<\/p>\n
Lazarus says the program was successful because it\u2019s now prompting the city to look towards larger investments in public transit as a whole, unanimously approving $1.35 million in the 2026 budget to expand the frequency of HART\u2019s Route 1.<\/p>\n
The buses will continue to run every 15 minutes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, but will increase to every 20 minutes from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weeknights and 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends. Currently, the buses run every 30 minutes to one hour on those weeknight and weekend times.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow I hope we’re moving into, hey, maybe we should fund the bus better, just generally,\u201d Lazarus said. \u201cThat does start with increasing the frequency, so we’re taking logical steps right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The program\u2019s free fare pilot program was not renewed, as the city is investing in the bus route…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":105793,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-105792","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-st-pete","9":"tag-st-pete-headlines","10":"tag-st-pete-news","11":"tag-st-petersburg","12":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","13":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105792"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105792\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}