What? No Bus Service For 200 Miles?
There isn’t any.
There’s no “regular” bus service in the area west of U.S. 41, not even along U.S. 301, in the north-south area bordered by State Road 674 and Gibsonton Drive.
That’s one big void. Just the area between U.S. 41 and U.S. 301 (with those same north-south borders) is more than 200-square miles.
I said “regular” bus service earlier because there is a bus that will go door-to-door with 24-hours advance notice for people who are pre-registered as disabled, but that service isn’t a product of HARTline. It’s Sunshine Line.
HARTline has several types of “special” bus transportation too, but you have to live within 3/4 of a mile of a “regular” bus route to use any of them.
As verified by HARTline spokeswoman Kathy Karalakis, none of the HARTline programs, including HARTplus; HARTaccess; HARTlink; HARTflex or any of the new circulator busses are available east of U.S. 41 except within the confines of Sun City Center.
So here we are, wondering why people get so bogged down at the accident-ridden intersections of Big Bend Road and U.S. 301 and Gibsonton Drive and U.S. 301 and find there isn’t any alternative to driving in that area.
“Park & Ride” is just a slogan. The people in the thousands of new homes being built along the U.S. 301 and Big Bend corridors have no bus transportation at all.
HARTline says until South Shore (especially the U.S. 301 corridor) has sidewalks and safe places to stop, the bus company won’t be able to provide service in the area.
Because the Sun City Center community has sidewalks and safe places to stop, there are services available within the limits of that community. These include busses that shuttle between Community Hall and the new Wal-Mart Supercenter; the Kings Point clubhouse and several community destinations; and Route 87 that transports to the South Shore Regional Library, South Bay Hospital and several other Sun City Center stops.
The new 35LX – express route– developed with the sole purpose of driving Sun City Center residents directly to Westfield Brandon mall, makes no stops in between; leaving residents of the South Shore communities to the north waiting for a bus that isn’t scheduled to come.

Penny Fletcher is the editor of The Sun, a Tampa Tribune affiliate