Tampa approves $1.6M to offer free bus rides for a year on popular HART route

HART to announce free bus rides

One of Tampa’s most popular bus routes is about to be free for an entire year. Kailey Tracy reports.

TAMPA, Fla. - A Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority route that travels through a major part of Tampa will be free for riders for a year starting on Jan. 5, 2025.

Tampa City Council approved about $1.6 million for the initiative at its meeting Thursday. City leaders and HART’s CEO officially announced the free initiative at a press conference Friday morning.

The money comes from parking fees and was initially set aside to pay for electric vehicle charging stations.

Councilmember At-Large for District 3 Lynn Hurtak had the idea, and said free rides on Route 1 for a year would help more people than the charging stations would.

"Not only are we helping the average, every day Tampeño who uses that route, it is the busiest route, so not only are we helping them with their monthly budget, but we’re also going to be doing with this is incentivizing people to try the bus in the same way that the street car was never used, or wasn’t used as much, then all of a sudden we made it fare free and we have over a million riders a year," Hurtak said Friday.

READ: Why are people flocking from Florida in record numbers?

Route 1 connects downtown Tampa to the University Area, USF’s campus and the area around the VA hospital through Florida Avenue.

File: HART bus

"This is a corridor to USF," Councilmember Luis Viera representing District 7, said. "It's nearer our VA. You're going to talk about a lot of veterans. You're going to talk about a lot of students. You're going to talk about a lot of everyday working families earning 12, 13, 14, 15 dollars an hour, working at Walgreens, working at Walmart, wherever it may be, trying to get to work, and then back home to their families. These are the people that we're going to be helping, and if we don't move this forward, it's going to be something that I think goes against the welfare of those folks," he said.

"It's also very important because it is, as a public commenter said earlier, an issue with affordable housing," Hurtak said Thursday. "If you don't have to pay for the bus, I mean, that's $80 a month more for people who take it every single day and that's a lot of money to a lot of people who have to take the bus. But also incentivizing people to give it a try and say, ‘hey.’ I mean, a lot of people didn't ride the Streetcar until it was free. So, giving it a year to just say, ‘hey, let's give it a try. Let's see how it goes,’ is all we're asking," she said.

It narrowly passed in a four to three vote Thursday. Councilmembers against it said they have an issue with the city funding a HART initiative.

"I'm in favor of funding, I just don't think that the city should do it," Councilmember Bill Carlson of District 4 said. "The city has very limited funds and we have a huge number of problems, besides the fact that our roads are falling apart and we now have a stormwater issue where we are on a fast track to try to protect people's houses and livelihoods and we need to use every dollar we can to protect people," Carlson said.

READ: Plant City Paralympian defying odds once again as she prepares to welcome baby girl with fiancé

"HART and the City of Tampa are separate," Councilmember Gwendolyn Henderson, who represents District 5, said. "So, it's not about the goodwill aspect of it. It would be easy for us to just continue to give money away because we could find goodwill in a lot of different situations. It is not the city's responsibility to fund HART initiatives, even though they are of goodwill, especially considering a time when HART presented that they are indicated that there is a shortfall in their budget for the Streetcar," she said.

File: HART bus

"I can understand that purpose of saying, ‘Hey, you know, let's pay for a free ride for one year for Route 1, but there are other routes that could be taken into consideration. And we didn't do a study to figure that out, or HART did not," Henderson said.

READ: Biological sisters adopted by different families take to TikTok to find teenage brother ‘Giovanni’

The council also discussed the streetcar at the meeting on Thursday. The streetcar is free for riders, but recently lost grant funding from FDOT. Most members of the council expressed support to continue to help keep it free. Others also added that the two topics, the streetcar and Route 1, aren’t mutually exclusive.

There will also be more frequent stops along Route 1, running every 15 to 20 minutes. HART will switch to a paperless payment system on Jan. 5 too and move to the Flamingo Fares app. Riders can still use exact change to pay for fares.

Friday at 10 a.m., HART’s CEO, Hurtak, Viera and others will officially announce the free ride initiative at a bus stop in downtown Tampa.

STAY CONNECTED WITH FOX 13 TAMPA: