'Forward-thinking' program gives St. Pete's Kenwood residents free rides using SunRunner UPASS
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. - Megan Basnett was the first of her neighbors in Historic Kenwood on Tuesday to test out the neighborhood’s UPASS program with PSTA. She tapped her way onto a trolley for free just steps from her home.
"This kind of gives them that incentive to go jump on because now you're kind of representing the creativity of your neighborhood," she said. "This is a phenomenal and ingenious, forward-thinking, progressive idea," Basnett said.
PSTA has a popular Universal Pass Program known as UPASS. Businesses, Pinellas County Schools and nonprofits pay for unlimited bus and SunRunner rides for their students or employees.
"When Kenwood Neighborhood Association called us and said, ‘well, how about a UPASS program for the whole neighborhood,’" Brad Miller, PSTA’s CEO said. "That kind of blew my mind, and it was, it's very unique," he said.
A year later, they launched the first neighborhood UPASS pilot program in Florida.
"We can jump on the bus to really anything that we need, but sometimes you're going to make that trade off if you're like, ‘OK, I'm going to have to pay, you know, $4.50 just to go there when I could quickly jump in my car and go.’ Now, with that kind of barrier taken care of, we just don't have an incentive to drive when we don't want to. We can access everything from Kenwood now really from a tap," Basnett said.
The historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association is paying PSTA $5,000 from the Association’s dues for the first pilot year of the program. PSTA officials and Kenwood residents said the move will help alleviate traffic and connect the neighborhood more with downtown St. Pete, something public transit has been doing in Kenwood for a century.
"This Kenwood Neighborhood Association, it's historic. It's very old and it was created by public transportation 100 years ago. The streetcar came out here from downtown St. Pete, and that's how all these homes could be built here. And we're just celebrating that, and then the same sort of transformation can happen today with the SunRunner incentivizing or making development easier to get to. This UPASS program will get people to jobs, get people to and from school in a very easy way," Miller said.
"I think it just opens up their ability to be able to live in St. Petersburg maybe without a car," he said.
Miller said they’ll track ridership over the next year. Residents like Basnett said they hope it’s an idea that sticks.
"This is not only so important to show people that they will be able to grow in this neighborhood and be able to continue to get to services when driving is no longer an option versus having to move closer to some sort of efficient way of getting around," she said.
Anyone in the Association can get a UPASS. Right now, about 550 residents are in the Association.
Miller said other neighborhood associations across the county have already called, expressing interest in a UPASS program.
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