The SunRunner, a bus route that runs from downtown St. Petersburg to the beach, will now have to negotiate car traffic on Pasadena Avenue after the state stepped in.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Whit Blanton, executive director of transportation planning agency Forward Pinellas, said the local transportation secretary told him, \u201cworst-case scenario,\u201d the SunRunner could lose part of its lane along Pasadena Avenue.<\/p>\n
Now it appears that worst-case scenario has come to pass on a small portion of the service\u2019s route. Pasadena Avenue is a state road. St. Petersburg controls much of the SunRunner\u2019s route on First Avenues North and South, which will continue to have a rust-red dedicated lane.<\/p>\n
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. Traffic lights are timed to stay green for the teal-and-yellow buses if they\u2019re running behind schedule.<\/p>\n
But losing the dedicated lane on Pasadena Avenue could force Pinellas to return $22 million to the federal government.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t have a reasonable lane that\u2019s dedicated for buses and cars to turn, then it takes the \u2018R\u2019 out of BRT (bus rapid transit),\u201d Darden Rice, chief planning and community affairs officer for the Pinellas transit authority, previously said. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing rapid about a bus stuck in traffic.\u201d<\/p>\n
After its launch, the SunRunner quickly provoked the ire of local Republican officials.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all see the near-empty or completely empty buses running all over the county,\u201c 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 \u201cthe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis joined the chorus of complaints.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Another SunRunner detractor, Rep. Linda Chaney, R-St. Pete Beach, held a press conference Tuesday celebrating the SunRunner lane in South Pasadena opening to car traffic.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
DeSantis pointed to that bill as a device that would \u201cprevent localities from agenda-motivated lane reductions to force people out of their cars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Critics of the SunRunner also point to its declining ridership, which has dropped off since the service started collecting fares a year after it launched. In July 2023, the SunRunner had nearly 100,000 riders. The route was down to about 63,000 riders that same month this year, according to Pinellas transit agency data.<\/p>\n
South Pasadena Mayor Arthur Penny and other city officials appeared at Chaney\u2019s event Tuesday, along with two St. Pete Beach commissioners and Pinellas Commissioner Chris Scherer. Some Pinellas residents who oppose the SunRunner appeared as well, holding signs reading \u201ctraffic congestion relief.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is kind of a big deal, huh?\u201d Chaney said to applause. \u201cWe\u2019ve been waiting a long time for this …. Today you, the taxpayers, get your road back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chaney said the state transportation department conducted a recent study that found the annual number of crashes had increased 50%, from 36 to 54, on Pasadena Avenue after the bus lanes were added.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir team has thoroughly studied (Pasadena Avenue) and gave us the evidence we needed to get our lane back,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
The state will be removing signs today and repainting the lanes on Pasadena in the next one or two weeks, Chaney said.<\/p>\n
Other studies have suggested the SunRunner reduces congestion and improves safety. Forward Pinellas published a study this year finding that crashes involving death or serious injury were down 40% along a different portion of the route, First Avenues North and South. Travel times for car drivers and bus users alike were down six minutes during morning rush hour and three minutes during afternoon rush hour.<\/p>\n
In response to a request for comment, Pinellas transit agency spokesperson Stephanie Weaver pointed to numbers collected from a national database showing that there were fewer overall crashes, as well as fewer fatal and severe injury crashes, on Pasadena in 2023 and 2024 compared to 2017 and 2018, before the bus lanes were added. Crashes on that road were at their lowest point in 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the transit agency\u2019s data.<\/p>\n
An earlier state transportation department study found that travel times for cars largely went down, and speeds increased, after the SunRunner lane was added. That study compared an eight-month period in 2018 and 2019 to an eight-month window just after the SunRunner launched in October 2022.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really disheartening to see\u201d the SunRunner lose part of its dedicated lane, said Garrett Marple, a member of Activate St. Pete, which advocates for transit and pedestrian accessibility in St. Petersburg. \u201cThese lanes were a step in the right direction in terms of creating options for premium transit …. It also improves safety and reduces congestion.\u201d<\/p>\n
The dedicated lane on Pasadena Avenue also served as a lane for bike riders. Advocates have worried that cyclists will be less safe if they now have to share the lane with cars as well as buses.<\/p>\n
Chaney said she wasn\u2019t sure of the bike lane\u2019s fate either. A Florida Department of Transportation spokesperson did not answer emailed questions or provide the latest SunRunner study in time for publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The SunRunner, a bus route that runs from downtown St. Petersburg to the beach, will now have to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22538,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[17457,412,202,204,203,17458,199,201,200,12328],"class_list":["post-22537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-bus-lanes","tag-ron-desantis","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-pete-transit","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-sunrunner"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22537","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=22537"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22537\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}