TAMPA (970 WFLA) -- Hundreds of transit executives are in Tampa this coming week for the Bus and Paratransit Conference of the American Public Transit Association. Kenyatta Lee is chief administrative officer at HART, which is hosting the conference. Lee hopes to show off some of HART's recent improvements to her nationwide counterparts, including a multi-county fare card known as the flamingo card, and plans to re-orient the bus lines to a grid system. She expects many of the visiting experts will take turns grabbing a seat or a rail and riding the bus.
"We're all usually 'transit geeks,' so we like to go into town and try out the fare (card), the system and how the system maps are laid out," Lee said.
Lee says about 1,500 transit experts are attending the conference at the Tampa Marriott Waterside hotel.
All day Sunday (May 6), some of the nation's best transit bus drivers are taking part in the International Bus Roadeo... which is part of the APTA conference. bus operators, maintenance teams and their supervisors will compete to be the best at moving those big city buses down the road. The competition is going on at the PSTA depot in northeast St. Petersburg.
Many vendors will be showing off new fare technologies including mobile ticketing. The conference runs through Wednesday (May 9).