Tampa extending Green Spine through Ybor City

With more people moving to Ybor City, the neighborhood needs more ways for people to get around.

There’s one on the way - the extension of the City of Tampa’s Green Spine urban bicycle track through Ybor. Tampa Director of Transportation Services Brandon Campbell says the project will carry the Green Spine from its current stopping point at Nuccio Parkway and Seventh Avenue up Nuccio, east to North 15th Street, and along 15th up to East 21st Avenue. The project adds the separated bicycle lanes typical of the Green Spine along Nuccio and 15th Street up to 17th Avenue. At 15th Street and 17th Avenue, the cycle track transitions into a wide, paved shared-use path along Cuscaden Park, Campbell says. 

Construction is slated to start in August and finish in late summer or fall 2025. The Ybor project will complete the eastern portion of the Green Spine. After that, there is one final piece to complete the 3.4-mile urban bike trail.

“There is one final phase on the west side," Campbell says. "It goes through downtown across the Cass Street Bridge and ends at Rome. Howard Avenue to Rome will be built, hopefully next year.”

The first phase of the Green Spine - along Cass Street from the bridge to Nebraska Avenue - opened in 2016 as part of the project that converted Cass and Tyler Street to two-way traffic. But the concept dates back to 2011 and 2012 and Tampa’s InVision Center City Plan, which looked to improve pedestrian and bicycle facilites and link neighborhoods to downtown to meet the needs of projected population growth in the city’s urban core.Since then, Water Street Tampa and other projects in and around downtown have been part of a development boom and population surge.

“We’ve been pursuing this vision of the Green Spine for almost 12 years now and we should have it completed in the next 18 to 24 months,” Campbell says. “It’s taken a while to get to the point where we are but we were anticipating growth throughout that whole (InVision) plan process.”

The Green Spine has also served as a model for the city’s quick-build projects - low-cost transportation projects with short construction times that improve safety and accessibility for pedestrians, bicycles, e-bikes and scooters. In fact, the city’s first quick-build project was a Green Spine project- the early 2023 construction of separated bicycle lanes across the Cass Street Bridge. Quick-build projects are also the focus of a series of upcoming projects to improve pedestrian and bike safety on some of the city’s most dangerous roads. Funding for those projects comes from a $20 million Safe Streets For All federal grant and a $5 million local match.

For more information, go to Green Spine Ybor extension