WE NEED HELP
H ave you noticed how much
longer it takes us to go
anywhere in the Tampa
Bay area from anywhere
else? It is no longer just when you
are crossing bridges that you get
into traffic jams. Travel here has
become a real problem. Therefore,
the future will be bleak if we don’t
work together as one area and one
region. We must work on the problem now.
The population of the immediate Tampa
Bay area is roughly 3 ½ million people, and
it’s expected to grow by another million in
the next ten years. It’s estimated that 44,755
people commute five days a week between
Pinellas and Hillsborough counties and
another 10, 890 are commuting between
Hillsborough and Pasco counties, which
are among 300,000 vehicles driving around
daily. The backups during peak of traffic
times are nightmares, due in part to how
we are spending our funds on roadways.
What has been missing is an effective
regional plan for the future, instead of
isolated transportation projects that serve
as Band-Aids to fix current local problems.
Maybe there is hope, since back in 2007,
the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit
Authority was created to devise a master
plan for Tampa Bay. The group’s members
are now putting their plan together. It is
called Envision 2030, and it is based on a
proposed regional transportation system
that will serve the needs of the entire
By John Wilson
Tampa Bay area. The economic future
of Tampa Bay could well depend on this
regional approach, which up to now has
been missing, and experts say it requires
various kinds of transportation systems,
such as bus, rapid transit, ferry service, air
taxis, aerial gondolas and even futuristic
tubes to move people along at hundreds
of miles per hour.
We desperately need an effective
transportation network if the economy
of our area is to flourish. We will need
good transportation if we want to continue
to attract businesses and a talented work
force. But for any of this to happen, we
need to think about where we live, work
and play as one area, one region instead
of as individual cities and counties. We are
connected and must have an overall plan.
We need an area-wide transportation
network that will serve everybody in our
entire area. It does not exist at the present
time, and new companies interested
in locating here are waiting for us to
implement one. We have one of the best
128 TAMPA BAY MAGAZINE | MAY/JUNE 2020
places in the world to live, work
and play, if you can overcome this
problem. We have become a uniquely
diverse metropolitan area. Yet the
traffic that clogs our highways and
the individualized and somewhat
isolated construction of highway
improvements have failed to address
the regional issues of getting people
where they need to go efficiently.
The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transit
Authority has been given a mandate by
the Florida Legislature to do what has to
be done to improve our economic vitality
by designing a world-class transit system
that uses a variety of options. We cannot
achieve this by simply building more
roads. We have to find ways to effectively
move our residents and visitors throughout
the area. The goal is to get people where
they need to be quickly, economically and
safely. That is going to take a unified effort,
and the clock is running.
We should have started working on
this problem that has existed for years
and gets worse, not better, as each day
passes. I don’t know the answer, but I
surely understand the problem.9
EDITOR’S NOTE: John Wilson, who retired
from Fox TV in 2014, worked more than 50
years in radio and television news broadcasting.
COMMENTARY
John Wilson