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Oh, how the bus could ease life
© St. Petersburg Times Last weekend we drove to Mount Dora, the little Lake County town of antique shops, B&Bs and, during the holidays, lights festooning every tree in sight of the downtown square. We had gone for the opening of an art show at Chiaroscuro, a small gallery owned by friends we hadn't seen in some time. To me the burning question was: Did they still exist with only one car? They do. This is a middle-class, two-career couple -- nice house, nice cat. She works in Orlando, a 40-minute commute on good days. He runs the gallery, a few minutes from home by car but not in walking distance. She drops him off in the a.m., drives to Orlando, works all day (knowing her, probably longer), picks him up at night. Downtown Mount Dora is tiny, so everything is a short walk from everything else. He can walk to the bank across the street, walk to lunch. One car is not always convenient for them, but it's doable. But, could we do it? In Tampa? It sounded heavenly after receiving our auto insurance bill and looking at sticker prices on new cars for my husband, who drives something Rent-a-Wreck couldn't move. Plus, cars are dangerous, which is why, even though I drive only about 7,000 miles a year, I own a small tank. I'd love to buy a car with half the steel at half the price, but, let's face it, I'm just as likely to get killed pulling out of my driveway as on I-4. I'm a good candidate for a one-car family. I work at home. South Tampa is like a big small town, so almost every place I go is 10 minutes away or less. My husband, however, commutes to St. Petersburg, bad enough, but he also needs the car during the day. Still, we could do it easy if Tampa had public transportation. Oh, I know it does, I've seen buses now and then, but I mean real public transportation, the kind where you can go to a major street and hop on a bus anytime. I'm no expert on bus routes, but I know it takes forever to get anywhere on one. Unfortunately, my days do not revolve around traveling from the Marriott Waterside to Ybor City, so the new $45-million trolley won't help. Walking is out. As it is, where we live now, the only place I can walk to is a gas station. Imagine very local bus service with lots of stops -- not only at major places like downtown or the West Shore business district, but up and down streets where smaller commercial clusters have come together, some of them in the 10 years I've lived here. Howard and MacDill have evolved into restaurant rows with galleries and interesting shops thrown in; Bay to Bay is an antiques mecca, with two new minimalls; Dale Mabry, of course, has always had tons of everything. All these streets have drugstores and other nuts-and-bolts businesses. The Gandy/Dale Mabry group -- Target, Home Depot, Sam's Club -- is better left to assault by car. Of course the streets would have to be made more walkable -- try climbing over barricades from parking lot to parking lot -- with sidewalks, and parking would have to be moved to the back or sides of buildings. And buses need to look more people-friendly -- get rid of those forbidding painted-over-with-ads windows that hide the passengers and make the vehicle look like a black hole. I can see it now. Riding the bus, leaving the driving to someone else, reading a book instead of silently cursing the guy who just cut you off, not having to find a noontime parking space at Pane Rustica. Not to mention people who need to use the bus now could live a little easier, at least as far as going places. -- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com. City Life appears on Saturday.
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Times columns today Lucy Morgan Sandra Thompson From the Times Metro desk |
