Many Minds Not Made Up on Mass Transit

One of the most far-reaching mass transit plans ever proposed in Hillsborough County will come before voters Tuesday. But a lot of people haven't made up their mind.

It's 7 o'clock Wednesday night in the cavernous auditorium of Hillsborough High School, in Tampa's Seminole Heights neighborhood. Under the stained glass in the historic building, former Congressman Jim Davis is looking to make some new history, as well.

"Look, the streetcar used to run down Central Avenue. You're aware of that," said Davis. "The original streetcar. And this is the heart of the city. And in some ways, we're going back to our history a little bit."

Davis is with Moving Hillsborough Forward, spearheaded by a coalition of business groups who see this as a path to avoid future gridlock on the area's highways. The one-cent sales tax would be split between roads, a doubling of the county's bus system and the area's first light rail line.

Davis gives his pitch to a couple-dozen people - most of whom live near the path of the proposed train.

"This connects us, it makes it easier for people to make choices where they want to live," he said. "I'm not going to sit here and say it's going to drive up your real estate value and create businesses here, but it creates an opportunity to open up parts of the city and county that I think are very difficult to do otherwise."

But if the backers of the mass transit tax have any hopes of it passing, they're going to first have to convince people like Stan Lassiter.

"I want light rail," Lassiter said. "But I want to know where it's going to go before we go ask taxpayers to pay billions of dollars for it."

The light rail plan being developed by HART - Hillsborough Area Rapid Transit - would run from New Tampa and USF to downtown, with another spur from heading west to Tampa International Airport. The north-south leg would run on one of two paths - either along I-275 or further east, along existing CSX tracks.

Building the first two legs of the proposed light rail line would cost nearly $3 billion.

Davis defends the transit board's decision not to choose a final alignment before the referendum.

"HART's going as fast as they can to develop this plan, but it's more important to get it right," he says, "than get it early."

Lassiter lives between Interstate 275 and Nebraska Avenue - smack-dab in one of the train's paths. And that could mean he ends up living next to a construction site - or his home gets taken by eminent domain. Lassiter says he's conflicted, because he supports the idea of light rail.

"Oh, 100 percent," he said. "At that point, light rail would serve its purpose. It's going to move people from New Tampa to downtown, taking the cars off the highway, freeing - hopefully - the traffic gridlock we currently have."

Then, there's people like Diane Hart. The president of the Democratic Black caucus also supports light rail - but only if it takes the other proposed route, through East Tampa. After a recent HART board meeting, she said that's a neighborhood where a lot of people don't have cars - and would use light rail.

"I've only heard them talk about the I-275 alignment. It's all about 275," Hart said. "They've brought in very little information as to what it would cost them to do 30th Street, 22nd Street - which runs directly through our community. CSX is a very difficult piece for them, but I believe it's doable."

Then, there's people like Dave Winterbauer.

"I have a problem anytime someone reaches into my pocket and tries to take my money," he said. "And this is a regressive tax. My mother will pay for this - she's on a fixed income. She's on Social Security. She'll wind up paying a higher sales tax for something she cannot ever use."

Winterbauer works at the Haley VA Center. Depsite the notorious rush hour traffic around the USF campus, he says it only takes him 15 minutes to get to work .