{"id":144810,"date":"2026-02-05T15:26:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T15:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/144810\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T15:26:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T15:26:33","slug":"tampa-leaders-look-for-solutions-to-improve-downtown-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/144810\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa leaders look for solutions to improve downtown traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"

HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Traffic congestion in downtown Tampa has become a daily headache for residents and commuters, many saying gridlock and long travel times are a daily frustration.<\/p>\n

We spent time listening to people who live and work downtown. They say timing the traffic is everything.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I don\u2019t plan it well, it\u2019s going to take me at least 30 minutes to go a mile and a half, and that\u2019s disappointing. I tell people to walk all the time,\u201d Killen said.<\/p>\n

John Killen lives downtown and commutes to Westshore for work.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo every morning and every afternoon I\u2019m dealing with Tampa downtown traffic,\u201d Killen said.<\/p>\n

He said the congestion has forced him to adapt.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s caused me to find alternative ways to get around it, and I have all these secret pathways,\u201d Killen said.<\/p>\n

Downtown residents are not the only ones feeling the impact. Commuters traveling into the city from surrounding areas have similar frustrations.<\/p>\n

Stephany Rojas lives in Zephyrhills, but commutes downtown for work.<\/p>\n

Rojas said, \u201cIt\u2019s pretty crazy, it\u2019s like stop and go takes me about an hour and a half to get to work every day.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not everyone agrees that the traffic is unbearable. One man who both lives and works downtown said the congestion does not faze him.<\/p>\n

Stephen Brenna said, \u201cHonestly, I’m from LA, so it\u2019s nothing compared to L.A. traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, City leaders acknowledge the growing problem. Tampa City Council member Bill Carlson said downtown’s traffic issues have been building for years.<\/p>\n

Carlson said, \u201cThe traffic plan in downtown is the same as it has been for years, and Tampa has grown into a big downtown or a big city now, and we need to manage the traffic better. There’s traffic jams all the time downtown.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carlson said that with more people living and working in the area, roadways are being pushed beyond their intended capacity, causing traffic jams.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a horrible blight on our city that we can\u2019t drive around downtown and we have to fix it,\u201d Carlson said.<\/p>\n

City leaders are expected to discuss potential solutions to ease congestion during Thursday\u2019s city council meeting scheduled for 9 am.<\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

How journalists battle the rise of AI fake news<\/p>\n

As News Literacy Week kicks off in partnership with Scripps News, Tampa Bay 28 reporter Michael Paluska sat down with fact-checkers at PolitiFact to learn how they combat misinformation<\/a> in the age of AI.<\/p>\n

AI is making fake news harder to spot: How journalists at PolitiFact debunk it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HILLSBOROUGH COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Traffic congestion in downtown Tampa has become a daily headache for residents and commuters,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144811,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[205,187,11148,27779,2318,51242,276,711,135,3670,137,136,208],"class_list":["post-144810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-abc-action-news","tag-city","tag-congestion","tag-council","tag-downtown","tag-driving-tampa-bay-forward","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-jam","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-local-news","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-wfts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144810","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=144810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}