Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Verizon is making a killing on this FiOS gimmick. The demand for FiOs is so overwhelming, that at the beginning of this year, the company moved a bunch of repair technicians away from fixing landline telephone service in order to install service for those new hungry FiOS customers. 

Because of that, some landline customers have had to wait up to a week for phone repair.  But that’s a problem. The State of Florida wants to make sure that your phone works if you have to call 911, so they require phone companies to repair service within 24 hours at least 95 percent of the time in any given area. 

Verizon knew they were not quite meeting that goal, so they went to the Public Service Commission in March to ask for an exemption.  Thankfully, the PSC said no, and in fact began a probe to see just how bad Verizon was performing.

Turns out that over the past 6 years, Verizon’s record declined steadily, and failed to meet the standards 262 times in 2007, compared with five times in 2001.  What was their excuse?

Verizon officials traveled to Tallahassee in April to tell regulators that the company was simply overwhelmed with demand for the FiOS service…

Attorney General Bill McCollum is not impressed, and asked the PSC to open a formal case, and begin piling on the fines.  At $25,000 per violation in 2007, the petition calls for over $6.5 million in fines.

Go Florida!

AutoVantage Road Rage Survey Finds Tampa “Most Likely to Multi-task, and Eat and Drink”: 

The commute to work can be an unpleasant one for people across the country, and the road seems to be getting even bumpier for Tampa drivers.

The third annual In The Driver’s Seat Road Rage Survey, commissioned by AutoVantage, a leading national auto club, found that Tampa drivers, tied with Baltimore and New York, ranked No. 1 for being the most likely to observe other drivers eating or drinking while driving every day, compared to 24 other major American cities.  Tampa drivers are also most likely to observe other drivers multi-tasking (like putting on makeup, shaving or reading) while driving ever day.

Overall, Tampa was named the ninth least courteous city in terms of road rage in the survey.

Thank your gods McDonald’s stopped serving that McDLT (some assembly required). But seriously, you people have to manage your time better. You can’t be eating while driving. After all, your children are watching.

Bonus link for our friends over at Stuck in the 80’s:  Jason Alexander (aka George Costanza) sings his way through a McDLT advertisement, looking a bit like a Miami Vice extra.

For the last three years, AutoVantage has measured road rage for America’s biggest cities, and then listed those with the rudest drivers along with the nicest.

In 2006, Miami had the rudest drivers in the nation.  In 2007, Miami had the rudest drivers in the nation.  In 2008, Miami has the rudest drivers in the nation.

In 2006, Minneapolis had the nicest drivers, while the most considerate drivers were found in Portland in 2007.  This year, Pittsburgh beat out Portland for title of most courteous.

Believe it or not, Tampa’s drivers were ranked 10th nicest in 2007 (Tampa wasn’t included in the 2006 list).  But they fixed the calculations in 2008, and found that Tampa has the 9th rudest drivers in the US (tied with Dallas).

We’ll get to the reasons why Tampa ranked there in the next post.  In the meantime, check out the 2008 Road Rage National Results.

Rudest:

1. Miami
2. Boston
3. New York
4. Baltimore
5. Washington, D.C.
6. Atlanta
7. Los Angeles
8. Phoenix, Ariz.
9. Dallas and Tampa, Fla. (tied)

Most Considerate:

1. Pittsburgh
2. Portland, Ore.
3. Seattle
4. Minneapolis
5. Cleveland
6. Cincinnati
7. Sacramento, Calif.
8. Chicago
9. San Diego
10. San Francisco

One of your most basic needs is transportation. In order to get those wonderful things you want, see all there is to see, and get to work to afford all of that, you gotta find your way around town.

Unfortunately, the price of gas in Tampa Bay is as high as it has ever been, and in Forbes’ recent report of the Best And Worst Cities For Commuters, the Tampa area ranks #6 in worst commutes:

No. 6: Tampa, Fla.: Tampa commuters are victims of urban sprawl. As late as 2005, 25% of area properties were classified as investment properties; this rate was almost double the national average. What does this have to do with commuting? It’s a good sign that the city is spread out. While Tampa exhibits a very low population density, commuters are stuck in traffic delays 45 hours a year, and 7% take more than an hour to get to work.

There are alternatives to driving, but they are not as easy to find as you might think. Here is an quick list of local transportation websites that may help you in your search for a better or at least cheaper way to get around.

Bay Area Commuter Services, Inc. (BACS) is one of the Florida Department of Transportation’s nine commuter assistance programs within the state. It is a private, non-profit organization founded and funded by the State of Florida Department of Transportation to promote transportation alternatives to the single-occupant vehicle in the Tampa Bay area and surrounding counties. The agency operates in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties. Their stated mission is to enhance the region’s economic prosperity by actively influencing the reduction of traffic growth and air pollution by promoting commute options and developing new programs to help reduce peak hour traffic congestion for businesses and the community.

BACS helps publish the Tampa Bay Commuter. The TBC is a publication that encourages alternative transportation for commuting to work, such as mass transit, carpooling, and riding your bike. The Tampa Bay Commuter is independently published by 2Plus, Inc., a private non-profit corporation, in cooperation with Bay Area Commuter Services, and is supported by funds from the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT), grants, and through the Hillsborough and Pinellas Metropolitan Planning Organizations. It does not reflect the official views or policies of FDOT or BACS.

Use the Tampa Bay Commuter to find ways to share rides (carpool) around the Tampa Bay area.

And then there is mass transit.

The Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) is in charge of busing you through Pinellas county, which includes the tourist-friendly beach trolley. Hillsborough Area Regional Transit (HART) runs mass transit for Hillsborough County. Three weekday buses travel between the two counties - PSTA’s 100X and 300X, and HART’s 200X.

You can also use the TECO Line Streetcar to get from south downtown Tampa to Ybor City. The USF Bull Runner runs five routes within the University of South Florida and over to the University Square Mall. All USF students, faculty, staff and visitors can ride the Bull Runner for free.

HART’s schedule is featured on Google Transit, but PSTA’s is not.

Finally, there is the promise of a regional transportation plan coming in the future.

The Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority (TBARTA) - was created as an agency of the state on July 1, 2007 to plan, develop, finance, construct, own, purchase, operate, maintain, relocate, equip, repair, and manage multimodal systems in Citrus, Hernando, Hillsborough, Manatee, Pasco, Pinellas, and Sarasota Counties. The authority’s purpose is to improve mobility and expand multimodal transportation options for passengers and freight throughout the seven-county region.

But we’ll see about that.

We hope all you moms, stepmoms, and grandmas had a great day yesterday!

Wayne Garcia recently implored us to stay out of the water. In addition to his complaints of sharks, gators, red tide, and jellyfish, a new waterfront threat has emerged: Pelican Slams Into The Face Of Swimmer.

We told you about the south Florida governments clamoring to cut the state in two to form a 51st state, but we did not realize that this happens all the time, all over the country.

Oh, we know that in talks of adding states, Puerto Rico sometimes is mentioned, as is the District of Columbia.  But the talk of states splitting is apparently all the rage.

We were surprised to hear that just this year, an Athens columnist suggested splitting Georgia in two in order to solve the Atlanta-Alabama-Georgia-Florida water wars, which was seconded by a Valdosta newspaper.

We also hadn’t heard about an effort for northern California and southern Oregon to quit their respective states, creating the new State of Jefferson.  That effort has been going on since 1941.

Over the years, U.S. state secession proposals have come from more than 30 of the 50 states, including parts of tiny, tiny Rhode Island.

The only people who succeeded in seceding from a state to become their own state was Maine - they used be part of Massachusetts.

So I guess if you South Floridians wanna leave the rest of your state, you better get in line.

Smile!

You might be on a webcam!

There are more than a handful of public area webcams in the Tampa Bay area, and I figured I’d try to put a list of them all in one place. 

Most of the webcams are claimed by your local media companies, and they call them trafficcams or weathercams.  WFTS has a web cam on top of the GTE Federal Credit Union, while MyFoxTampaBay has a bunch of weathercams, including two on top of their huge SkyTower (one facing east and one west) on Kennedy Boulevard, as well as one at Clearwater Beach and at Grand Court in South Tampa.  They even have a weathercam inside the WTVT studios.  TampaBay’s 10 has four trafficcams. WFLA purports to have a camera atop the News Center near downtown, but we haven’t seen an image there in months. Bay News 9 brags of fifteen cameras online locally, and lists several more cameras all over the state of Florida.

511 Tampa Bay has a handful of trafficcams, while Weatherbug lists a few weathercams in the area, including this camera atop the Rampello Downtown Partnership School, one at Legends Field on Dale Mabry, Bright House Networks Field in Clearwater, and one at Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg.

In downtown Tampa, there are at least four construction cams.  In a Big Brother sort of way, contractors hire companies to keep a camera trained on the building and crew to make sure everything is being done right, and on time. Many of these are available to the public, and face the structure being built.  Take a look at the Element Construction Cam and the Tampa Bay History Center Construction Cam. The first ConstructoCam we noticed was the Skypoint construction cam (which is still taking two or three photos an hour - take a look at the photos around sunset).  Right next to that one is the Curtis Hixon/Tampa Museum of Art webcam (username: tampamuseum@webcam.com, password: downtown).

Your county government has a camera on top of the pink Hillsborough County building in downtown.  You can take control of that one, even zooming to look into the windows at Tampa City Hall.  The City of Clearwater Beach has three beachcams set up along their waterfront.

Speaking of the beach, the TradeWinds resort has a St. Pete Beach webcam, and the Don CeSar offers a great view of the beach with the appropriately named Don CeSar Resort Beach Cam.

TECO has two cameras at their Big Bend facility to watch the manatees, but are only operable from November to April.   Ybor Eye has three area webcams in various states of working order.  Some realtor has a Hillsborough River cam, and Mike’s Cat Cam shows a patio which may or may not really be in Tampa Bay.  

Those are all that I could find, but I’m certain there are others out there that I have missed.  If you have a webcam in the area, be sure to let us know about it in the comments.

Happy voyeurism!