Commissioner Murman quoted in this article on SaintPetersBlog regarding Streetcar:

Is the future looking brighter for Tampa’s much mocked streetcars?

By Mitch Perry on January 5, 2015

For more than a decade, Tampa’s downtown streetcar system has been mocked mercilessly by its myriad critics,  who say it’s a perfect example of how Tampa doesn’t get transit right.

But there increasingly appears to be momentum to finally improve the troubled system.

While there have been discussions regarding the 2.7-mile network of stations at the Tampa Port Authority for the past couple of years, one tangible shot in the arm is that an upgrade in the system was referred to explicitly in waterfront developer Jeff Vinik’s grand vision plan for the Channel District that was unveiled last month.

Currently trolleys run every 20 minutes between noon and 10 p.m. Monday to Thursday, until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, and noon to 9 p.m. Sundays. Each ride costs between $1.25 for seniors to $2.50 for regular tickets; an all-day pass is $5. Critics say that’s too much time for anybody who actually works in the city to actually rely on, and is simply a tourist attraction.

While Mayor Bob Buckhorn has talked for a couple of years about making the system free and allowing for  more frequent trips, that plan has yet to come to fruition. The main reason is because the streetcar system (officially known as the TECO Historic Streetcar) has yet to find a way to solve an insurance issue —  an insurance policy required by CSX to cross its track in Ybor and costing annually some $400,000.

“We hope to get a legislative remedy this year,” Hillsborough County Commissioner Chair Sandy Murman said on Monday at the HART board meeting, adding that it’s the single biggest issue to overcome before any major restructuring of the streetcar system can commence.

Murman and her HART board colleagues on Monday listened to a presentation on potential improvements to the streetcar system, delivered by Steve Schukraft from HDR Engineering.

HDR looked at exploring the potential for an extension of the current system up through the Marion Transit Center, which runs on Marion Street parallel to Florida Avenue in downtown Tampa, as well as a plan to upgrade the current streetcars with a more modern look.

Schukraft said that his team looked at four different alternative extensions to the current system, which now ends downtown at the Franklin and Whiting street station, north of CAMLS.  The costs range from $30 million to $60 million. One of those routes would move the system north along Ashley Drive, to Tampa Street and Florida Avenue, and eventually to the Marion Transit Center.

Schukraft also discussed a plan to purchase newer streetcars — eight in all, that would cost a total of $32 million.   Combined with $11.2 million for a new storage and maintenance facility and $18.4 million to pay for new tracks and power upgrades, the total cost of that plan is over $60 million.

HART CEO Katharine Eagan told board members that a plan to have the trains arrive every 15 minutes (instead of 20) is being reviewed, a plan that would cost $1 million to implement. She said the “800-pound gorilla is the Vinik plan,” which remains unclear at this very early juncture in regards to how any streetcar upgrades fit in his master plan. But she said she has been in discussions with the Lightning owner’s economic development team and will continue to do so in the future.

County Commission Chair Murman — who also serves on the Tampa Port Authority, which has had regular discussions over the years about the streetcar — said she wants to see the HART board continue to have discussions with the Tampa Downtown Partnership, Mayor Buckhorn’s office, the Vinik Team and the Ybor City Development Corp., and “not just do it on our own as a single entity.” The streetcars are a joint operation of the city and HART.

Eagan said that fares from the streetcar brought in $457,000 of revenue to HART last year.