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
Client
Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority
Location
St. Petersburg, Florida
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.
Client
Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority
Location
St. Petersburg, Florida
Markets
Priorities
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.
