Commissioner Murman quoted in this Creative Loafing article on HART:
At HART meeting, more talk on the meaning of the agency itself
Posted by Mitch Perry on Mon, May 5, 2014 at 1:41 PM
After years of increases in ridership, CFO Jeff Seward said at a Hillsborough Area Regional Transit board meeting today that ridership has begun to “plateau” as he offered up his preview of the transit agency’s FY2015 budget.
That led to what is often a frequent discussion at such meetings — the true meaning of what the agency is supposed to be all about.
“How are we going to get more riders? More ‘choice’ riders? How are we going to appeal to them? What are we doing with other government entities to stretch out dollars further?” asked Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman.
There has been considerable discussion inside the Transportation for Economic Development group (which includes county commissioners and the mayors of Hillsborough’s three cities) on expanding HART to become the local agency that will oversee all transportation issues in the county. But Murman expressed concerns that the agency isn’t ready to step up just to continue to serve parts of the county that consider themselves underserved at the moment.
“I serve a lot of people in the county and they are begging for service,” she said, referring specifically to South County. “We have over half a million people coming into Hillsborough County by 2025. How are they going to get around? We’re not going to build any more roads, I can tell you that.”
Among the projects that Seward said was a possibility was building another maintenance facility. One additional BRT route would necessitate such an expansion. Murman questioned why the agency isn’t talking to officials in Tampa or the county about collaborating on such a project.
That led John Melendez — selected by Governor Rick Scott back in 2012 to serve on the board — to say he really didn’t think it was that crucial for the agency to expand, saying if decreases in ridership were caused by an improvement in the economy, then there shouldn’t be any angst about growing.
But that statement was shot down by several other board members, like Mark Sharpe. The County Commissioner said that all studies indicate that Millennials (those born between 1982-2001) are extremely interested in the availability of multiple transportation options. “We need to be as aggressive as possible in increasing ridership,” he said.
More on the possibility of HART increasing its authority in the area could be unearthed when the Transportation for Economic Development group meets again towards the end of this month.
