Kenwood gave out free bus passes to neighborhood association members. What now?

Over the past month, 3-year-old Monte Mae Murbath has eagerly boarded the SunRunner every weekend.

She knows the logo and she owns a small rubber bus of her own. Each time she and her mother, Lauren Hubbard, step on board, Hubbard taps her bus pass to grant her a free ride — a pass given to their household by the Historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association.

The association began a partnership with the Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority to offer free bus passes to any of its dues-paying members on June 8. The program is the first of its kind in the county, and possibly the state, said Stephanie Weaver, transit authority spokesperson. Though currently a pilot program, if it goes well the transit authority could begin to consider other neighborhoods for similar partnerships.

A membership in the Historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association earns a resident a pass that gives unlimited access to the SunRunner, trolleys and other buses. The price of an annual membership with the association is $35 for an individual. The fare to take a round trip on any bus is about $5, meaning if a member like Hubbard makes more than seven round trips, they can break even, she said.

“We always take it on the weekends because then it’s one less trip Mama has to take in the car,” Hubbard said. “Otherwise I was just kind of doing the driving from A to B and being distracted. Now I get to be fully engaged with my kid.”

The transit authority doesn’t know what success may look like for a program like this, so staff will be paying close attention to rider behavior throughout the year, Weaver said. During the first month, 58 people using the passes rode, with a total of 234 rides taken. One person has tapped nearly 40 times, Weaver said. Another two have ridden about 20 times. That leaves each remaining passholder with about one or two round trips last month, according to ridership data.

In total, the Historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association gave out around 400 passes, surpassing the original demand expectation of a couple hundred. That means about 15% of the passes have been used during the first month of the program. The transit authority’s contract with the neighborhood, which asked for about $5,000, covers 600 passes for the first year.

“We’ve seen many folks have picked up a card from the neighborhood association, but not many have used them yet,” Weaver said. “This illustrates that many people would like to have the option to ride transit whenever they please, but may not use it in place of their car for their daily commute.”

According to Weaver, the pricing of next year’s contract will be determined by the number of taps, not the number of cards, so the cost will be more in line with the program’s popularity. And though the actual use of the service remains to be seen, the free bus pass has proven enticing enough to grow the association’s membership by nearly 30% in a few weeks, said Alexis Baum, the Historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association’s treasurer.

The partnership began because Baum raised her hand.

She attended a meeting last year hosted by the neighborhood association to give the transit authority a chance to promote the launch of the SunRunner. The presentation discussed the transit authority’s partnerships with other businesses. Baum asked Bob Lasher, one of the transit authority’s external affairs officers, whether they had ever paired up with a nonprofit neighborhood association. Lasher said no, but they’d be willing to consider it.

For the Historic Kenwood Neighborhood Association, deciding to enter into the partnership was a big decision, Baum said.

“We’re all volunteer, we don’t have huge funding, it’s all memberships and sponsors and grants,” she said. “It’s kind of scrappy.”

The response has been overwhelming, Baum said.

Before the bus pass program, the association had about 500 members. The number has stayed consistent over the years. But when the news about the bus passes began to circulate, Baum saw new membership subscriptions almost every day. By the end of the month, the association gained 150 new members. The line to pick up a bus pass was out the door on the day the program launched, Baum said.

While Hubbard is thrilled to have the chance to take trips to St. Pete Beach and its pools for free each weekend with her daughter Monte Mae, she also wonders whether other neighborhoods will get the same opportunity. She is aware of the affluence of Kenwood, with the average home price wavering around $600,000 over the years and the average income of residents around $80,000, according to the real estate site Redfin.

She especially wants to see more effort to expand programs like these to community redevelopment areas in St. Petersburg where she works with children through her nonprofit, All The World’s Kids, to encourage engagement with the world around them.

“The city has grown so much, but relatively, we haven’t come very far,” Hubbard said. “How wonderful would it be if this was a precedent partnership for every single neighborhood association, and these kids could have the same opportunities as my daughter?”

She doesn’t know how it will happen, she said. Neither does the transit authority, according to Weaver, but this partnership may be a step forward for Hubbard’s vision. They won’t know until the results come in next spring, when negotiations will begin for a second contract for Kenwood and possibly others.