Barbara Haselden has called for an end to the SunRunner rapid bus service. She’s rallied against plans to create another express bus lane and dismissed the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority’s efforts to secure more electric buses.
A decade ago, she led opposition to the transit tax referendum that could have brought light rail to Pinellas County.
Starting next month, she’ll be more than a vocal voice against recent transit initiatives. Haselden will have voting power over the transit agency she’s criticized.
In a 4-3 vote, Republican Pinellas County commissioners put Haselden on the board as a citizen appointee last week. Haselden replaces Vince Cocks, a transit advocate who sat on Pinellas’s transit agency board for three years. His term expires at the end of the month.
Haselden prevailed over Democrats’ preferred choice, Gloria Lepik Corrigan, who is wheelchair-bound and regularly uses bus paratransit services.
The new county appointee comes after the Pinellas County board flipped to Republican control for the first time in nearly a decade in 2022.
All four Republican Pinellas commissioners now sit on the county transit agency’s 15-member board. St. Pete Beach Mayor Adrian Petrila, who pushed for an early end to the SunRunner’s free fares, has also viewed some transit initiatives with skepticism. Haselden will likely add to that bloc, said Mark O’Hara, chair of the agency’s Transit Riders Advisory Committee and a supporter of Lepik Corrigan.
Unlike other transportation boards in the region, the Pinellas agency board isn’t prone to tight votes that fall on largely partisan lines. But an increasing count of conservative voices has O’Hara wondering what might happen during controversial decisions — on expanding the SunRunner, raising transit taxes or even another stab at light rail.
Haselden is “completely anti-transit,” he said.
But Republican Commissioner Chris Latvala bristled at that characterization. He said he’s confident that Haselden, like other conservative members of the board, isn’t bent on defunding the agency.
“Ten years ago, she led an effort to oppose a tax in her county,” he said. “I don’t think that should be held against her for being a conservative. I don’t think it should be held against her that she opposes taxes.”
At the board meeting, Haselden said she’s focused on bringing the agency “into the future.” She’s said that Pinellas County streets are clogged by “empty” buses.
“I seek to be a voice to advocate for the 1.5% of the county who are dependent on the good performance of PSTA and for the people who pay for it, the taxpayers,” she said.
A spokesperson for the bus agency said the number of unique riders recorded by the agency adds up to around 15% of Pinellas County residents — and that count only includes those who use a credit card or fare card. In July, riders took over 800,000 trips on Pinellas County buses. But bus ridership nationwide has suffered for decades as Americans have bought cars and spread to the suburbs.
O’Hara said conservatives on the transit agency board use similar rhetoric. They’re not professedly anti-transit, but instead argue that no one rides the bus, and taxpayer money is wasted on increased service.
In an interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Haselden said she’s opposed to the SunRunner because she sees it as a strategy to go after “choice riders” — tourists and people who can choose between their car and the bus. She wants Pinellas’s transit agency to focus on those who depend on the bus: for example, people with disabilities, elderly people and low-income people who may not have cars.
That means providing more bus shelters, “not trying to change people’s minds about their own personal transportation,” she said.
Haselden’s perspective stands in contrast with the priorities of another new face coming to the transit agency’s board. Max McCann, the new citizen appointee chosen by St. Petersburg City Council, said he wants to adapt the region’s infrastructure to help all residents walk, bike and take public transit. The governments of St. Petersburg and Pinellas County each get one appointee.
But both affirmed their dedication to those they now serve.
“I just want to do a good job for the people of Pinellas County,” Haselden said. “All of them.”
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