HART CEO Scott Drainville (at podium) flanked by Tampa City Councilmembers Lynn Hurtak (R) and Luis Viera (L) Credit: Photo via hillsboroughtransit/Facebook

More often than not, fighting for mass transit feels like an uphill battle in the Bay area, but activists got a nice present late last year when Tampa City Council voted 4-3 to allocate $1.65 million to make Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority’s (HART) Route 1 free to ride for an entire year.

The funds, as previously reported, came from money people paid to park in city garages; the money was already set aside within the city’s fiscal year 2025 budget and would’ve gone towards providing electric vehicle charging stations in city parking lots. Then District 3’s at-large Tampa City Councilwoman Lynn Hurtak stepped in.

“We have a very small percentage of cars that require charging in the city. So is that really a good use of city dollars? And that would impact a small amount of people, where I figured to make Route 1 fare-free for a year was about this amount of money and would open it up and help so many more people,” Hurtak said in an interview to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

Councilman Luis Viera, who is also the chairperson of HART called the proposal a “real winner.”

“That’s why when Councilwoman Hurtak proposed it, I immediately jumped at it,” he told council.

The free service is expected to start on Jan. 5 and last until Jan. 4, 2026. It will also include more frequent stops along Route 1—which runs between the University Area Transit Center and downtown Tampa all the way to the trolley—from every 20 minutes to every 15 minutes.

A spokesperson for Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told CL she will definitely sign off on the proposal so that the fare-free service can start on schedule.

“The biggest barrier for improving and expanding public transit here in Tampa is a lack of familiarity and experience,” Dayna Lazarus told CL, adding that Tampeños often ride public transit in other cities, but not at home. “This fare-free project gives people the opportunity to try the bus for the first time and break that seal.”

Lazarus—an A.I.C.P. certified urban planner who co-founded the grassroots organization Transit Now Tampa Bay, and seven-year member of the Hillsborough TPO’s Citizens Advisory Committee—points to Tampa’s TECO Streetcar, which has been fare-free thanks in part to money from the feds since 2018, as an example of no-cost public transit that gained popularity once people stepped on.

She has championed public transit for so long because she she’s the issue as a non-partisan way to just improve quality of life. “At the end of the day, if we increase public transit, it will help more people in their day to day lives, period, end of story,” she added.

Justin Willits, Director of Planning and Scheduling at HART, will be tasked with making sure the increased frequency for Route 1 runs smoothly. The corridor could potentially be home to bus rapid transit (BRT), he told WMNF public affairs program The Skinny on the morning after council’s vote.

BRT is a rail-like service with a dedicated bus lane that reduces riders’ wait time in traffic. Willits said St. Petersburg’s SunRunner, which takes riders from downtown St. Petersburg to St. Pete Beach is a great example of BRT.

“And this corridor, I would argue, would perform even better than the SunRunner does. It’s got higher ridership and a lot more potential, in my opinion,” he said, adding that FDOT has invested in improving slower speed roads—like Central and Ola Avenues—not on the potential BRT route, resulting in more comfortable bike lanes.

The board of Walk Bike Tampa also supports the fare-free initiative and its potential to improve affordability and accessibility challenges in the Bay area and give residents incentive to choose public transportation over personal vehicles.

“A well-integrated transit system offers affordable and convenient alternatives for those who can’t afford a car, prefer not to drive, or simply need a more sustainable way to get around,” the board wrote in an email to CL. “Additionally, as more people shift to public transit, this can alleviate congestion on the roads, leading to improved traffic flow and a higher quality of life for everyone—whether or not they use public transportation.”

Still, council was one vote away from not approving the plan thanks to no-votes from Councilmembers Bill Carlson, Gwendolyn Henderson and Charlie Miranda.

Henderson and Carlson took issue with the city funding a HART initiative. “The vote today is not whether we’re pro transit or against transit, it’s which agency should do it, which agency is authorized and has the responsibility to do it, and that clearly is HART, because it was moved out of the city 40 years ago,” Carlson said.

But Hurtak pointed to data about BRT, which she said is basically the Route 1 corridor, and countered that it is the city’s duty. “It is our responsibility to fund roads and transportation in the city. We do it right now with cars, we’re doing it more with bicycles and pedestrians, but what we aren’t doing is working on transportation,” she said to WMNF.

Henderson cited the fact that there hasn’t been a specific study to determine the need for free fares for Route 1.

Hurtak again pointed to a promising statistic from late this year. “The entire HART system went fare-free after [Hurricane] Milton because people had gone through [Hurricane] Helene…a lot of folks lost their cars in Helene, so we saw a bus uptick then, but after Milton, HART made it fare-free for two weeks. By the end of that two weeks, Route 1, had a 9.5% increase in ridership, just in two weeks of being fare-free,” she told CL.

Willits told WMNF that Route 1 already serves 3,500 trips a day on weekdays and hopes to see that number jump to at least 4,000 if not higher.

“If we would have thought this wasn’t a great idea, then we would have had to push back on the councilwoman,” he said. “But we talked about it at HART, and we said, ‘This is a really solid idea. It’s a partnership with the city. Maybe it could lead to something greater in the future.”

One of those goals is more funding. A report released this time last year said that while HART is effective, it runs on a budget similar to systems in cities that serve roughly 1.5 million fewer people. WUSF said that, “Other metrics put it in the same funding bracket as Chattanooga, Tennessee and Boise, Idaho, while serving a population five times larger than either city.”

Lazarus, for her part, is just happy to potentially see working people get some relief. Yes, there will be folks going from the Heights neighborhoods to and from downtown for hockey games and special events, but the majority of people she sees on the route at all times of the day are workers, laborers, and others like veterans getting treatment at the VA and construction workers headed to jobs at five-o-clock in the morning.

“If you ride the bus to and from work everyday using Route 1, that’s $4 a trip. That’s 20 days a month. That’s $80. That’s a grocery visit. That’s a medical visit for a kid. That’s all sorts of different things that people can then budget,” Hurtak said.

Walk Bike Tampa noted that locals spend nearly 60% of every dollar they earn on housing and transportation is saying plainly, “For many, the financial pressure of housing and transportation costs creates barriers to upward mobility and a diminished quality of life.”

“It’s just a lot of workers that use that bus that are not high wage workers,” Lazarus added. “So many people rely on that bus.”

UPDATED 01/02/25 10:09 a.m. Updated with comment from Walk Bike Tampa.

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