Obscure Transit: The TECO Streetcar 

A cool fact about the TECO Streetcar is you can visit an actual part of Cuba without needing a passport! Parque José Martí, next to Cadrecha Plaza station, has been Cuban territory since 1956! This is because the land that is now the park was once a boarding house where Cuban national hero José Martí (who frequently visited Tampa to rally for the cause of Cuban independence) recovered after surviving an assassination attempt and being taken care of by Paulina Pedroso (the most prominent female leader of Cuban independence) in 1892, and to honor him, when the land was sold to Manuel Quevedo in 1951, Manuel decided to give it to Cuba! The park has been plotted with soil from Cuba's different provinces! José Martí's support for the 1868-78 Ten Years' War in Cuba got him exiled from Cuba by the Spanish authorities, which is why he spent time in the US visiting Cuban communities to do patriotic speeches and fundraise for the independence movement. For the next two decades, Martí travelled from Spain to Latin America and then the United States, settling in NYC in 1880 and visiting places like Tampa and Key West. The Cuban flag was actually designed in NYC by Narciso López and Miguel Teurbe Tolón over dinner there in 1849 (both of them died in Cuba in 1851 and 1857 respectively due to fighting with the Spanish). José Martí chose to return to Cuba in 1895 and was killed in battle against Spanish troops at the Battle of Dos Ríos. To recognize NYC's important role in the independence of Cuba, Cuba gifted the city with an equestrian statue of José Martí designed by sculptor Anna Hyatt Huntington that was cast in 1959 and dedicated in 1965, located in the southern end of Central Park!

Ybor City is called such because it was named after prominent Cuban cigar manufacturer Don Vincent Martinez Ybor who obtained 40 acres of land for a company town in 1885 and built a permanent factory in 1886 (which was the largest cigar factory in the world; now a historic site). Vicente Martinez Ybor first established a cigar factory in Key West in 1869. Ybor had run a very successful cigar manufacturing business in Cuba, but he fled to the US after Spanish colonial authorities discovered his connections with revolutionaries. Key West was once known as the cigar capital of the world, with cigar making in Key West dating to 1831, but in the 1880s, hurricanes, limited freight connectivity, lack of room of expansion, and labor unrest led many manufacturers to move to Tampa, thus Ybor City was born. Unlike Cuban sandwiches made in Key West and Miami, Tampa-style Cuban sandwiches have Genoa salami, influenced by the Italian community in Ybor City. Tampa-style Cuban sandwiches also use palmetto fronds when baking Cuban bread. The first commercial bakery in the US to produce Cuban bread was the La Joven Francesca bakery in Ybor City which was established by the Sicilian-born Francisco Ferlita in 1896. The bakery was destroyed in a fire in 1922, rebuilt and expanded, and it closed in 1973 and was renovated and converted into the Ybor City State Museum. Today, La Segunda Central Bakery in Ybor City is the largest producer of Cuban bread in the world!

It seems insane that a city the size of Tampa doesn't have a metro network.

The sister city to Tampa is St. Petersburg which despite not having a streetcar has the best Bus Rapid Transit system I've seen in the South. It's called the Sunrunner and has a right of way lane that forms a loop through the entire city to the beach and back. I highly recommend you check it out, I'm surprised City Nerd didn't talk more about it in his video.

Upload buddies! Very surprised that the streetcar is fee-free 👀! What a great way to incentivize other modes of transportation downtown!!

I was literally just there and went to see the TECO streetcar in Ybor City. It was awesome having a beer watching the trains go by. Highly recommend and also recommend that Tampa creates more lines. Salt Lake could use an area like Ybor, where a station is integrated with the surrounding area... Rio Grande Plan.

tampa would be a really cool city to live in if they expanded the streetcar and supplemented it with a couple higher capacity lrt lines (portland style)

Yeah I lived in Tampa my whole life and wish there was more mass transit :/

The Harbour Island people mover was unique because instead of using wheels and a rollway or tracks, it floated on a cushion of air and was drawn with cables. It was built by the Otis Elevator Company and was the 2nd such “Hovair” installation after the Duke Hospital PRT.

In addition to my earlier comments, I learned from further research that there are current plans to extend the Teco Line Streetcar from Downtown Tampa to Tampa Heights from a $67 million state grant. However, a county tax to help pay for the project was ruled unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court back in 2021.

I’ve taken Amtrak to Miami and back towards NYC twice. Amtrak crosses the trolley tracks right outside of the Tampa station for Amtrak. I’ve always wanted to ride the streetcar but, I never got off at Tampa.

TAMPA MENTIONED!! I grew up in South Tampa and have ridden the TECO streetcar many times. Our transit outlook is absolutely terrible. HART is basically unusable. Hoping it’s one day extended up to Seminole Heights or down the CSX ROW in South Tampa. Would be wonderful

Hey please please respond: what colleges do you think have the best undergrad rail/transit engineering undergrad programs (ie civil engineering focused on more urbanist and high speed rail goals)?

If Tampa can negotiate timing with CSX, throwing a couple DMUs on existing track (NJT Riverline style) between MacDill and USF through downtown would bring a lot of coverage for fairly cheap.

TECO runs nice and late on weekends, more cities could learn from that. And that rolling stock is adorable

I have family in St Petersburg and I convinced my brother to come to Tampa with me for the day. We sat on the tram for 15 mins and it did not move the entire time.

Thank you for taking the time to feature a video on the Teco Streetcar. My first time riding this system was when a Streetcar Fest was held back in the Fall of 2009. Additionally, I had the rear opportunity to visit the carbarn during the following week, where I had an extensive talk with one of the employees who came out to greet me. From what I learned the current system came by due to the actions of a non-profit organization in addition to the special tax assessment and the streetcar endowment that came about after the demise of the Harbour Island People Mover, which I also had a chance to ride several years earlier. Although I congratulate all those who took part in its creation, it would've been more beneficial if a modern LRT model, that is more suited to deal with Florida's humid weather conditions, had been chosen rather than to purchase near exact replicas (without A/C) from the Gomaco corporation. Additionally, funding to expand the one line, rather than to withold it would've made more logical sense, as well as making transfers between the streetcars and HART's transit buses seamless, as opposed to spending separate fares.

Tampa's streetcar system used to have a line running all the way out to the Sulphur Springs tower. There's been an idea kicking around to turn at least part of I-275 into a boulevard and introduce light rail onto it. Given the growth all around the USF campus that has been renamed Uptown Tampa it would be amazing to see them introduce a light rail system connecting Downtown to Uptown!

What does TECO stand for?

Its too bad that these cities don't realize what a powerhouse they could be if ppl could just get around their metro areas easily, especially tourists. I've visited Tampa twice and felt trapped at the airbnb unless everyone in my big family wanted to do the exact same thing with the one rental car

tampa needs a skytrain! tampa needs a skytrain!

This is exactly the kind of system every US city should be building out right now. Once we restore our lost trolley networks, then we can focus on HSR or grade separated rail 🙌

Why is it that a Lot of These streetcar and light rail systems in north America seem to like operating with 12 minute headways rather than 10 minutes? I mean 12min frequency is better than 15min but its weird and Not an easy number to orientate yourself around as a Rider?

Yes, Thank you Climate and Transit. Thank you for pointing out how it wasn't Tampa's fault for no expansionin, but Florida itself (thanks a lot DeSantis, you put us years behind). I wished there was more of these in the Bay Area. St. Petersburg had its own vast trolly systems on a smaller scale compared to Tampa but was also just as popular. I wish the state has as much intrest in letting our cities public transportation grow as much as they are NOW more intrested in Brightline. Also, thank you for covering a video on the Bay Area. We have a lot of potential here!

I lived in Tampa for a year and I think it is one of the worst american cities by all measurements. St Pete isn't too bad but tampa is a craphole.

If Tampa were in any state besides Florida or in any region besides the Southeast it would have a proper transit system by now... But when you've got every single decision filtered through a "Spectre of Socialism" lens this is what you get... How dare anyone compete with private, for-profit automakers...

Such a pathetic system. Not only did they opt for non-accessible rolling stock, but have seemingly GIVEN UP on converting the system to modern LRT and or extending the service DESPITE the high demand for the service. Tampa is definitely one of the most frustrating cities in the US when it comes to transit

I hate Florida 😑

Still too much transit in Tampa. Time to get rid of the streetcar.