{"id":15862,"date":"2025-10-22T16:25:42","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T16:25:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/15862\/"},"modified":"2025-10-22T16:25:42","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T16:25:42","slug":"sunrunner-dedicated-bus-lane-removed-in-south-pasadena-opens-to-car-traffic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/15862\/","title":{"rendered":"SunRunner dedicated bus lane removed in South Pasadena, opens to car traffic"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lane on Pasadena Avenue is now open to cars after being off-limits to regular traffic.<\/p>\n<p>SOUTH PASADENA, Fla. \u2014 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 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wtsp.com\/article\/news\/local\/pinellascounty\/pinellas-county-sunrunner-national-award\/67-31861809-0830-471b-b7fa-6af80bf919be\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">SunRunner<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Rep. Chaney noted bus ridership is low, and the dedicated bus and bike lane is a headache for drivers.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cToday, you the taxpayers, get your road back,\u201d Rep. Chaney said. \u201cParents 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,\u201d Rep. Chaney said.<\/p>\n<p>St. Pete Beach resident Claudine Reece said traffic has been worse since a fire destroyed the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wtsp.com\/article\/news\/local\/pinellascounty\/fire-dolphin-village-publix-cvs-st-pete-beach\/67-3f896235-ec24-431a-b154-63aa99324820\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">Dolphin Village Publix<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSo 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,\u201d Reece said.<\/p>\n<p>In 2024, Rep. Chaney backed <a href=\"https:\/\/flsenate.gov\/Session\/Bill\/2024\/1301\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">HB 1301<\/a>, requiring FDOT to study traffic congestion and safety before repurposing existing lanes.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd what they found is a 50 percent increase in crashes annually, jumping from 36 to 54 annual crashes,\u201d Rep. Chaney said.<\/p>\n<p>PSTA said an FDOT study from 2023 shows there were no significant changes after the special lane was implemented. FDOT&#8217;s crash data management system reported more than 100 severe and fatal crashes in 2024 and 37 so far this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis impacts everybody. The reliability of the service, the safety for drivers. We&#8217;re going to go back to having more accidents before the bus and turn lanes were installed,&#8221; Franklin Alves, with Activate St. Pete, said. &#8220;We have so many other things we can have our representative focus on, but we&#8217;re celebrating making a service worse for people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Representative Chaney said it will take a couple of weeks for FDOT to remove the bus lane markings on the street.<\/p>\n<p>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.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A lane on Pasadena Avenue is now open to cars after being off-limits to regular traffic. SOUTH PASADENA,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-15862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15862","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=15862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}