Can Transportation Save Sarasota's "Growth"?

It is most likely that ONLY transportation can save Sarasota's "Growth".

For those unfamiliar with the discussion, "Growth" as used here means new buildings. Typically, old buildings are torn down to make room for the new buildings. Often, even usually, the people using the old buildings for homes and businesses have to find other places, if they even can.

There are a number of folks in Sarasota called "developers" who build new buildings in large batches, generally tearing down old buildings in even larger batches. They like to think of themselves as the leaders of the community and tend to claim that what they do is the only thing Sarasota can do to have jobs. Sometimes they are even right.

However, there are side effects to all the new buildings. Traffic is the most noticeable. It is getting quite inconvenient to get around in this town! The traffic from the new high capacity buildings has to use the same old low capacity streets and roads.

Recently a large project was approved that anyone could see would add hundreds of car trips per day. A city planner, always helpful, came up with the great idea that adding a bus stop to the plan would solve the problem of all those car trips! The project was approved, of course.

Was the planner kidding? Was the bus stop suggestion a, ahem, "favor" for the developer? I am not in a position to say, but the bus stop idea leads to a larger than one bus stop plan that might be Sarasota's road to recovery from the traffic problem.

What if, what if you didn't need a car in Sarasota?

If you don't have a car now in Sarasota there are a whole list of places you can't reach and a multitude of jobs you can't get to. People visiting Sarasota rent cars at the airport!

Suppose our public transportation was so world class that we would prefer it to owning cars and driving ourselves? Wouldn't that be wonderful?

What if you could put your cell phone to your ear and have a shuttle meet you in any neighborhood in the city that would take you to a nearby destination for a little change? What if you could go on that same shuttle to a bus stop if you were heading to a more distant place, and another shuttle would meet you at the destination bus stop to take you directly to the building you were going to?

This is what I was writing about in my "Jobs for Sarasota" article. This would not only make a car unnecessary for a lot of people, it would open up some 200 good jobs. Eventually the traffic would be abated and the developers could start developing again?

The county could expand on this by contracting with the taxi companies to flesh out the hours that the bus system is not running with a reduced taxi rate for bus card users. I understand that this sort of system is already up and running in Phoenix AZ.

We need not worry about the bus capacity if more people ride the buses. The county has a full set of new buses and also still has all the old buses that they sometimes use as spares. With a little maintenance attention and a few new drivers the county could quickly double the bus service.

Yes, I know a lot of people prefer cars, and it would take a while to adopt the fewer cars idea. The alternative is more roads, but that takes a long time because so many agencies are involved and it is very expensive because you have to buy so much prime road front property. We can build the world class public transportation system much sooner.

We could have this in operation yet this year.