Tampa officials unveil plan to spend billions on mobility improvements for city
TAMPA, Fla. - The City of Tampa unveiled a plan to beef up its troubled street grid, one that could take generations to complete.
"We have all kinds of problems and challenges, safety being the biggest one," said Vik Bhide, the city's director of mobility.
Tampa is the fourth most dangerous metro area for pedestrians in the US.
Including car crashes, 54 people were killed on the road last year, with most of them being bikers and walkers.
Many visitors and residents walk around the city.
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The average Tampanian spends 48 hours per year in traffic, on streets mostly graded as fair, poor or failed.
"If we don't keep our community moving and moving safely then we are going to come to a screeching halt in the growth that we are seeing now, not only in the city of Tampa, but in the entire region," said Mayor Jane Castor.
The city released a hundred page PDF that shows plans to build bike lanes, pave decaying streets, fill in 1,300 miles of sidewalk gaps and build 300 pedestrian crossings.
The Tampa mobility plan can be accessed online.
They said recent work being done on west main street is an example.
"One of the things that we are looking at instead of looking at the entire roadway for repaving is to go in and repave those most critical areas so that we can start to show some improvement throughout our city," shared Castor.
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The cost of everything the city wants to do is $2 billion over 30 years.
As of right now, there are no specific funding sources.
"I'm all on board with this mobility plan," said city councilor Alan Clendenin. "You'll see that the short term, it's not a lot because guess what? We don't have the money to do it right now. It's something that we have to invest. We have to find the money."
The City of Tampa wants to spend $2 billion over 30 years to improve mobility.
The mayor said it's a bigger challenge without the "All for Transportation" funding from the county that was outlawed by a judge.
The city will have to appeal to the state and Federal government to fund its wishlist.
"You know we're always going to aim high," said Castor. "We're going to do everything that we can."