Lime bus line on track with redevelopment
Orlando’s free bus system reached its 20-year mark on Friday with a short but defining expansion of the Lime Line in the Callahan area of Parramore.
The added length is a mere half-mile, but it represents a generational shift in the city’s public transportation efforts.
The Lymmo system’s existing Orange, Grapefruit and Lime lines in the downtown area were shoehorned into established business and neighborhood districts.
The new piece of Lime Line was built in anticipation of extensive redevelopment that will bring a new UCF campus, Creative Village and Parramore’s new public school.
Transportation officials hope the Lime Line becomes the option for residents and students that supplants driving, as it has already for Delilah Garcia, a former New Yorker who rides the Lime Line most days from her home near Orlando City Stadium to her boutique job downtown.
“The free Lymmo has been huge for me,” Garcia said.
Bus service along a rebuilt segment of Terry Avenue and Livingston Street will put free rides at the front door of a satellite-college campus and mixedused development, opening in two years.
It’s a block away from the
OCPS Academic Center for Excellence, a school set to open this month for children in preschool through eighth grade.
“Instead of having to maneuver a line in some fashion into development, the development will build around us,” said Matt Friedman, spokesman for the Lynx transportation authority, which operates the Lymmo system for the city of Orlando.
The Lime Line opened last year, serving the FAMU College of Law, the state of Florida office complex, the federal courthouse and Lynx Central Station among other destinations.
Lymmo is the nation’s first “Bus Rapid Transit” system, a federal designation for bus service utilizing dedicated lanes.
Since starting up in 1997, its buses have traveled 3.5 million miles, carrying 22 million passengers.
It now has four loops: the inaugural Orange Downtown Line with 2.5 miles; Orange North Quarter with 1.5 miles; Grapefruit with 3.5 miles; and Lime, which now takes in 2.1 miles with the recent expansion.
The four loops carry between 3,500 and 4,000 riders a day during the week, or slightly more than the SunRail commuter train.
The busiest by far is the Orange Downtown Line, which has between 2,000 and 2,500 passengers daily during the week.
Second busiest is the east-west Grapefruit Line at nearly 1,300 daily during the week.
Next is the Lime Line with 150 to 300 per day, a count expected to rise to 1,500 with new students, workers and residents in Callahan.
Gustavo Madero, a Lime Line driver, said lunchtime is the busiest period now, especially with construction workers taking up seats.
The entire system has cost $47.5 million; a significant share of that came from federal and state contributions.
The Lime Line has cost $16.7 million. Of that, $10 million was a federal grant.
Lymmo’s significance extends beyond city limits.
DeLand resident Heather Sierstorpff is a student at the College of Law.
She commutes on SunRail from DeBary, then hops on the Lime Line for a short ride to the stop at Washington Street and Hughey Avenue.
It beats driving and especially the sweaty walk from a parking garage to the law school, Sierstorpff said.
F.J. Flynn, the city’s deputy transportation director, said the Grapefruit, Lime and North Quarter lines were established from dozens of alternatives.
“They all connect with economic-development opportunities, they connect with employment opportunities, they connect with SunRail and the downtown grocer,” Flynn said.
Two Lymmo expansions are in the books: one would go north to the Florida Hospital campus and on to College Park; the other would travel south to Orlando Regional Medical Center.
As with many transit agencies, growth plans are in neutral with federal help now uncertain or unlikely.
“There is no funding identified currently,” Flynn said.