TAMPA \u2014 Advocates say it’s one of the busiest bus routes in Hillsborough County and a key mode of transportation for people who rely on public transit.<\/p>\n
And now, HART’s Route One has received additional funding from Tampa City Council during its first public hearing on next year’s budget.<\/p>\n
The grassroots group Transit Now Tampa Bay wanted council to boost the funding for Route One by $150,000, up to $1.5 million.<\/p>\n
A handful of members told council the goal is to make sure the Hillsborough Transit Authority doesn’t have to decrease the frequency of the route and has the money needed to get word out about it.<\/p>\n
City council unanimously approved the additional funds but told Transit Now Tampa Bay that it also needs to talk with county commissioners.<\/p>\n
The group’s lead organizer says they have been talking with the county and explained why it’s so important to maintain this particular route.<\/p>\n
“Route 1 is a major connector between USF and downtown, and there are so many major hubs \u2014 people getting on and off \u2014 between there,” said Dayna Lazarus, the group’s lead organizer. “Also, down in downtown, it connects to the streetcar. Like Route 1 literally is a stone’s throw from the streetcar, which is free.”<\/p>\n
Council Chair Alan Clendenin said it is not a long term solution.<\/p>\n
“The long term solution is making the elected officials that are responsible for this and that owe it to the taxpayers in the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County, that they stand up and do the right thing by our transit systems,” he said.<\/p>\n
This is not the final word on the overall $2 billion spending plan.<\/p>\n
A second public hearing and expected final council vote is scheduled for Sept. 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA \u2014 Advocates say it’s one of the busiest bus routes in Hillsborough County and a key mode…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398114,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3140,2175,276,115,99,2718,135,137,136,2177,835],"class_list":["post-398113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-traffic-and-transit","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-sarah-blazonis","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-traffic-and-transit","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398113","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=398113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398113\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}