Extending Pinellas Trail to Downtown

Christina Silva had a story in Wednesday's St. Petersburg Times about the Pinellas Trail extension into downtown St. Petersburg. The final 2.1 miles will make the trail more accessible from the south end. It's current southernmost point near Gibbs high school offers no parking for joggers and rollerbladers and is virtually inaccessible by bike. Of course, there is always another side to the story. Since much of the trail's path into downtown will take place along 1st Ave. S, the removal of many parking spaces on the south side of the roadway is required. Some business owners are dismayed that this may impact their business:

"I sincerely hope they would not eliminate any street parking," said Dwight Watkins, owner of Cafe Alma [and a noted cyclist -ed.], a Mediterranean restaurant on First Avenue S. "If you are really going to develop a downtown area, I think you need to include more parking."

Others were not worried:

Midtown Sundries, a bar and restaurant on First Avenue S, has its own parking garage, so it probably will not be as affected by reduced parking, manager Chuck Knott said. "To me anything that brings more people downtown is a good thing," he said. "Who knows - maybe they will pop in for a drink."

Bike Sharing

Paris began its bicycle sharing program a few weeks ago, allowing tourists and pedestrians to use the specially designed bikes for short-term trips around the city. The bikes, their docking stations and maintenance is being paid for by an advertising company in exchange for space on city-owned billboards. A one-day pass is 1 Euro ($1.38), a weekly pass is five Euros ($6.90) and a yearly subscription is 29 Euros ($40).  There is an additional surcharge if the bikes are taken for longer than 30 minutes. While each is equipped with a built-in lock, the rates for going over your 30 minutes are quite steep, so don't expect to see many locked up outside Parisian cafes.

This type of program has been tried with limited success in cities around the world. Any chance of it happening here? Don't count on it. Tampa tried a program called OrangeCycles in 1997 which lasted only a few weeks and in 2004 Eckerd College scattered 50 yellow bikes around campus with the hopes that students would use them to get around. Today they can be seen locked in giant piles behind a chain link fence in a service area on campus.