A branded transit experience
Branded stations, real-time signage and a "Beach to 'Burg" identity that gave the corridor a sense of place before riders ever stepped onboard
Markets
Priorities
First-of-its-kind BRT with elevated platforms and multimodal improvements
A while after the SunRunner opened, Ben Harber found himself back in St. Petersburg checking into the same hotel where he'd stayed when he was working on the project. When he mentioned the bus line, the front desk staff recognized it immediately, explaining how their guests had been using it to reach the beach, the restaurants along Central Avenue and the rest of the city without ever needing a car.
For Ben, a senior project manager and architect at CDM Smith, that small exchange said everything about what the work had become. It was no longer a project that Ben had helped deliver, but a service the community had embraced.
Accessible transit for every rider
Station details built around accessibility, comfort and Florida realities, from heat-reflecting canopies to audible next-bus information
Public art built to last
Work from a local artist integrated into station panels, with fabrication and replacement strategies planned for the long haul
A partnership designed for long-term value
An under-budget opening that led to a new station, a downtown Clearwater transfer facility and a client relationship still expanding today
The SunRunner runs 10 miles between downtown and St. Pete Beach, and it’s Tampa Bay's first bus rapid transit system, carrying commuters, students, visitors, beachgoers and restaurant workers heading to a shift. From the beginning, PSTA and CDM Smith wanted every one of those riders to feel like the system had been built with them in mind.
An architect finds his people
Ben's career began in architecture, with work that ranged from high-rises to international master planning in China and Dubai. The projects were quite ambitious and very design-forward, but after several years of 70-hour work weeks, he began to wonder what the grind was all adding up to.
What drew Ben to CDM Smith was a former collaborator he respected pitching him with an unusual opportunity: the chance to bring an architect's aesthetics and sensibility into an engineering-led transportation practice. He became the firm's very first transportation facilities hire in Chicago and steadily built the practice from there, including CDM Smith's first train station project in the Chicago area.
Somewhere along the way, Ben found a newfound sense of gratification for the transit work he was doing. It turns out that he was fulfilled by people- moving them and collaborating with them. Transit work is about shaping the places that thousands of people pass through every single day, and Ben was doing it with coworkers and clients who cared about getting it right.
"Public transit is this collective idea, and the people who work in it really care about what they do."
A system that welcomes everyone
The SunRunner needed to feel intuitive to daily riders and first-timers alike, including people who had never thought of themselves as bus people. This meant sweating the kinds of details most riders will never consciously notice, but everyone feels.
PSTA's marketing and communications staff collaborated closely with CDM Smith throughout the process. Jones Worley, an Atlanta-based, woman-owned agency, was brought on board to shape the system's visual identity. Together the team built the "Beach to 'Burg" brand: the colors, graphics and signage that gave the corridor a sense of place and made the system instantly recognizable to anyone standing at a station.
The commitment to inclusivity ran deeper than the graphics, too. Push buttons let riders with visual impairments hear next-bus information out loud, while tall pylons carry real-time arrival screens visible from down the block. Lighter canopy colors reflect the Florida heat for anyone waiting on a sweltering July afternoon, and low-wattage lighting keeps the glow gentle near homes, beaches and downtown.
"We were always balancing what the agency wanted to say about itself with what would actually work in the field. Lighting, safety, maintenance, replacement, heat, weather and everything else that affects the rider experience."
The SunRunner BRT: Connecting Tampa Bay
Art you can ride past every single day
The stations feature work from local artist Catherine Woods. Her panel patterns give each stop a visual character of its own and turn waiting for a bus into something closer to standing in a public gallery, and the SunRunner gallery belongs to the neighborhood around it.
And just as importantly, the team designed for the art to stay. Artwork files were archived, spare panels were planned for fabrication, and damaged elements were made to be replaced without creating any long-term maintenance burden so each station could feel distinct while PSTA kept the whole system looking intentional for years and years to come. Catherine, Ben and team recognized that public art only works as a gift to a community if it's still beautiful a decade later.
The details that made it work
Connection inside the team too
The SunRunner united planners, environmental specialists, NEPA experts, civil engineers, architects, economists, funding strategists and technology specialists from across CDM Smith's transportation practice. National transit experience met the deep local civil engineering knowledge in the Florida market which meant that the project could draw on best practices from around the country, without ever feeling imported or disconnected from the place it was designed to serve. In many ways the same spirit of connection that shaped the corridor also shaped the team behind it.
"We work to learn what other people are doing outside our own lanes, and that really helps us work together more smoothly. It also helps us catch things before they become issues."
A relationship, not just a ribbon-cutting
When the SunRunner opened up under budget, the partnership between PSTA and CDM Smith only grew. PSTA added another station to extend the line's reach closer to downtown St. Pete with CDM Smith's help, and the relationship carried into the agency's next major capital project. This is a 15-bay bus transfer facility in downtown Clearwater, now under construction and expected to open in roughly 2027.
The connections have spread beyond PSTA too. A leader from the SunRunner program later moved into a capital construction role at Broward County Transit, another CDM Smith client, which speaks to the kind of trust that follows people from one agency to the next.
Meanwhile, along Central Avenue, the SunRunner keeps doing its work of linking people to restaurants, bars, neighborhoods and one another.
Paying it forward
For Ben, the SunRunner captures why he made the leap from traditional architecture all those years ago.
"This has felt entrepreneurial, building something from the ground up, but inside a big company. You can help shape a practice, learn from people outside your discipline and work on projects that communities use every day."
The SunRunner continues to shape how people move through St. Petersburg, and its impact is already extending into new work with PSTA and other transit clients. For Ben, it stands as proof of what public infrastructure can do when it's designed with an inspired vision and consideration for the folks the system is designed to support.
"I feel value in the fact that thousands of people use our facilities every day. I can't think of a better job or something that would make me happier than what I do here."