Transportation Group Wants Public Input

The transportation group charged with putting together a vision for West Central Florida will come to Brooksville this Wednesday to get input from Hernando County residents.

The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, or TBARTA, will hold a workshop from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Jerome Brown Community Center, 99 Jerome Brown Place in Brooksville. The center is just west of Tom Varn Park.

The workshop is open-house style, so the public can come and go at any time to provide input to TBARTA staffers and volunteers.

The master plan will include transportation options for Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas and Sarasota counties. In the first two phases, the public offered comments on where transit service should be located to serve regional transportation needs and what type of transit mode would be best for each of the transportation corridors identified in the first phase.

Now, TBARTA is putting the pieces together into region-wide networks to show how the entire system will link the seven counties. The public can view and comment on the draft networks during any of the workshops.

TBARTA is also hosting two online workshops. They are scheduled for 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13, and 5:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18. To participate, visit www.tbarta.com and click on the "Meetings" tab.

For general information on TBARTA and the Master Plan, visit the Web site or call 813-217-4048.