Tampa’s Mayor Jane Castor thinks so, “The route is already laid out from Orlando to Tampa,” Castor said. “It will basically go down the middle of I-4 and then come in to the Ybor City area, where the Brightline station will be located.”
TL;DR: Consider a Brightline Stop in Downtown Tampa instead of Ybor.
TSTB is generally excited to hear about a potential intercity mass transit service to Tampa. Ybor City has been the prime location since FDOT and Brightline identified it as a rail stop in 2017. However, Ybor City has building height limits due to a Historic Preservation ordinance ruled by the Barrio Latino Commission. This architecture overlay reduces building height limits to under four stories. We bring this up because Castor remarked in this article, “They (West Palm) had a senior high-rise living facility, they had a mall, they had restaurants, they had high-rise, market-rate condominiums.”
In regards to “first-mile, last-mile” Castor remarks, that the Brightline Station will be “in very close proximity” to our streetcar. However, we feel, why not intersect the station the proposed streetcar line in Downtown?
Downtown has been heralded since the 90s to become an intermodal station for high-speed rail. The site at I-275 between Tampa Street and Florida Avenue already has been studied and granted by the Feds to be used as a rail station. The Tampa Streetcar is planned to expand along Tampa and Florida in downtown too. Further, Castor can have high-rise buildings in Downtown with much less restrictive architectural codes.
A Downtown station would automatically align with the Westshore Intermodal Station just five miles south. With all these areas being Federal facilities, we can’t help but think that Tampa could have a tremendous opportunity for Federal grants to get both the streetcar extended and Brightline integrated in Tampa’s transportation plans.
The Trolly Stop Tampa Bay 
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