With less than two weeks to go before the 2010 ING Miami Marathon and snow on the ground here in St. Petersburg (well almost snow), I elected to do my final long run indoors so I treated my legs to a three hour push on my favorite treadmill at Anytime Fitness on Central Avenue.
St. Petersburg’s Central Avenue Trolley A Ride to Nowhere!
As I sat there hour after hour, I got to watch this big lumbering trolley rumbling up and down Central Avenue. Over the three hours that I chugged along, I got to see this big ugly thing a total of twelve (COUNT ‘EM TWELVE!) times. Now my office is at 1229 Central so I see this thing all day long and I hardly ever see more than one or two people on it, but today I really got to study it. At no time during the twelve times this thing went up and down did I see more than two people on it or a grand total of like 8 people on it all day. Now because the fare is .25 cents, that means the trolley generated a grand total of two dollars in revenue over the three hour period that I watched it. Today was not unique…every day this thing goes up and down Central and every day, Nobody on it.
Big Thinkers Decide St. Pete Needs a Trolley to Nowhere
I would love to go back and read the transcripts and reports of the experts and big shots who decided St. Pete just couldn’t live without these trolleys and how they were going to be so vital for all the businesses up and down the street. Needless to say, their reports and studies and recommendations were absurd and it results in a giant sucking sound (that’s the sound of money being wasted.)
St Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster Announces New Homeless Initiative
Several weeks ago, St. Petersburg’s newly elected mayor Bill Foster announced that he was going to spend some time focusing on dealing with the homeless problem in St.Pete. If you live in St. Petersburg or have ever visited here, you recognize St. Petersburg from the large packs of homeless people that wander all around downtown like drunken, listless dogs. When they’re not drinking or fighting or protesting or littering the place up they’re (wait that’s all they ever do). Anyway, despite the fact (or maybe because of the fact) that St. Petersburg and Pinellas County spends millions to provide service for these folks, the problem just keeps getting worse. There are more and more homeless causing more and more problems. So I say rather than let these perfectly good trolleys go unused and unridden lets let the fine homeless folks make full use of em. Only instead of having the trolleys loop up and down Central Avenue, lets have it loop back and forth between here and Tampa. I’ll donate a quarter for every bum that gets on the trolley for a one way trip over to our beautiful sister city, Tampa. While things are really cold here in the ‘burg, we just convince em that it’s much warmer over in Tampa and that they’ve got much yummier food at the soup kitchens!