FL: HART bus changes stir questions about public transit in Hillsborough

At an unshaded bus stop in Ruskin, with a scuffed bicycle leaning against her hip, Christina Carter waited. And she waited. And she waited some more.

“It should be here by now,” she said, picking up her phone to dial a customer service line.

Carter, 60, has long relied on her bike and public transportation after a years-ago surgery left her feeling unsafe driving her car. Most days, she bikes on busy roads to a bus stop near her home and rides HARTFlex South County or Route 31, two Hillsborough Transit Authority bus lines, to run errands or visit family.

But after Saturday, the Transit Authority is set to cut that HARTFlex line as part of a spate of changes that it says will focus resources in higher-use areas and make the system more efficient. The bus agency is upping the frequency of certain routes and extending service hours for others, while cutting the “lowest productivity” lines.

“We feel neglected,” Carter said of public transit riders in the outer reaches of Hillsborough County. The bus that day in early May arrived nearly an hour late.

Carter’s struggles exemplify the difficulty for Tampa Bay residents who do not drive in a metropolitan area with limited public transportation. And transit advocates say the changes strike at the core of a debate around the future of the regional bus agency: With a majority of riders concentrated in densely populated Tampa, should the agency’s limited resources be focused there, too?

“That’s the wrong direction, in my view,” said Mariella Smith, a former Hillsborough County Commissioner and former Transit Authority board member. “We need a better transit system serving the whole county.”

Changes coming to HART

The Transit Authority is set to discontinue three routes that stretch into the unincorporated county: Routes 24LX and 25LX, which link MacDill Air Force Base to Brandon, Riverview and Fish Hawk; and HARTFlex South County, which connects Ruskin, Sun City Center and Wimauma.

Frank Wyszynski, the agency’s communications manager, said the proposed changes are part of a yearlong review of the transit system that looked at ridership data and gathered input from employees and community members.

Last year, more than half of the agency’s bus trips were in Tampa. The other 44% were outside city limits, he said.

The soon-to-be-cut routes have some of the lowest ridership in the system, with an average of fewer than 90 daily rides last year.

HARTFlex South County, the route on which Carter relies, serves an average of 30 riders per day, with an average of one passenger per trip. The bus runs every hour between 6 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Passengers can also reserve the bus to be picked up or dropped off anywhere within the bus’ service area that is not a designated stop.

“From HART’s perspective, this service change is the result of the hard but necessary work of the (study),” Wyszynski said. “Looking across the full system, understanding how existing resources are being used, and making decisions that improve mobility and service quality for more riders.”

Still, he said, “We recognize that even low-ridership services can matter deeply to the people who rely on them.”

The Transit Authority is working to find alternatives, he said, and “a good portion of the funding from the service elimination is going to enhance service in unincorporated Hillsborough County.”

A yearslong transit debate reignites

Hillsborough’s bus system has long been underfunded compared to peer transit agencies.

The authority spends less per resident than other transit agencies with similar or larger coverage areas. Last year, for example, the Tampa Bay Times found that the transit authority was set to spend $74 per capita in fiscal year 2025, compared with $83 in Orlando and $124 in Pinellas County.

Hillsborough’s system is paid for through a combination of property tax revenues, state and federal grants, advertising and ride fares.

Voters in 2018 approved a one-cent transportation sales tax that would have funneled more money toward the agency. But the measure faced opposition in east and south Hillsborough County and was later struck down by the Florida Supreme Court.

In recent years, some local leaders have pointed to low county ridership as a reason to focus resources within smaller, denser Tampa.

County Commissioner Joshua Wostal, who serves on the Transit Authority board, last year pitched an idea that he said would bolster urban transit and lower property taxes for county residents: a city-imposed sales tax to fund public transit in Tampa.

The shift would satisfy two disparate groups, Wostal said: car-dependent constituents uninterested in paying for public buses, and city-dwellers seeking a wider range of transportation options.

Later that year, state Rep. Michael Owen, R- Apollo Beach, said he was drafting legislation to create a Tampa Transit Authority.

The proposals faced pushback from some Transit Authority board members, who worried consolidating services would hurt residents in the fast-growing county. Tampa City Council member Luis Viera, then-chairperson of the agency’s board, said last year, “I support the rights of cities to have their own sales tax, but as an addition to our mass transit system, not a replacement for it.”

Wyszynski said the upcoming service cuts are unrelated to any proposed legislation regarding public transit funding.

‘We rely on it’

Smith, the former Transit Authority board member, said the county’s bus service sees low ridership because the system is “so paltry that it’s not getting you where you need to go in a timely, convenient manner, and you can’t count on it to get you back.”

A robust, countywide system requires a stronger investment, she said. And “if we had a system that we were supporting well, more people would ride it.”

That kind of investment would benefit all residents — not just bus riders, Smith said.

“Transit is an important key to solving our traffic problems that everybody complains about,” she said. “We all benefit from that, and we benefit from living in a society where people can get to their jobs, to the doctor.”

Carter agreed.

She has used Hillsborough’s public transportation system since high school, when she took two buses daily to get from her home in Riverview to school at Tampa Catholic. She often did her homework on the trip back, her handwriting sloppy from the bumpy ride.

Now, she said, many of the people she meets on the bus can’t afford cars or the steep price of gas. Carter has a pass that lets her take unlimited Transit Authority bus rides for a maximum of two dollars per day.

“We need to give HART more money,” she said. “We rely on it.”

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