Tampa is pausing a contentious redesign of El Prado Boulevard in South Tampa while officials open the floor to neighbors at an upcoming Jan Platt Library meeting. City Mobility Director Brandon Campbell has defended the plan, and residents like Matt Marsden, advocates including Emily Hinsdale, and longtime area resident Quinn Rukholm have all weighed in as the debate over lanes, bike paths and safety heats up. The city delayed construction that was due to start in early May and is now gathering local feedback before moving forward.
The core proposal would convert stretches of El Prado from four lanes down to two, and add bike lanes, upgraded sidewalks and new pedestrian crossings. Officials say the changes aim to calm traffic and make crossings safer for kids and people on foot, shifting the road from a high-speed corridor to a neighborhood street. That shift is at the center of the dispute because it changes how people would move through South Tampa on a daily basis.
Campbell has put the changes in plain terms for residents. “We’re going to be narrowing the lanes… reducing the number of lanes so that we slow traffic down on this residential street,” Tampa Mobility Director Brandon Campbell told FOX 13 News. He also pointed to what the road was originally designed to handle and how it performs today, saying, “It’s basically built for 20,000 cars a day… as of right now… we have three to 8,000,” he said.
Those numbers are a big part of the city’s logic: if a wide road carries far fewer cars than its design capacity, narrowing it can reduce speeding without crippling movement. Yet many neighbors see the world differently. South Tampa is growing and people worry that removing lanes will create new bottlenecks during rush hour, push traffic onto adjacent streets, and complicate daily commutes for drivers and service vehicles alike.
That practical worry came from people like Matt Marsden, who argued the neighborhood needs reliable access for work and errands. “The people that live and work in South Tampa need to be able to commute and go places and work and do things,” neighbor Matt Marsden said. He also questioned whether dedicated bike lanes would be used enough to justify the tradeoffs, a point that resonates with drivers who say they rarely see cyclists on these roads.
“We’re doing a lot of things to slow traffic, but nobody’s riding bikes anywhere,” he said. That blunt observation captures a common critique: some locals want infrastructure that matches how they live now rather than aspirational changes that assume different habits. Opponents argue the plan risks creating long-term chokepoints without delivering measurable benefits if bike usage stays low.
On the other side, advocates for safer streets say the status quo already endangers pedestrians and cyclists. “El Prado Boulevard is right in the middle of the neighborhood, but it is a four-lane road,” said Emily Hinsdale with Walk Bike Tampa and Sidewalk Stompers. She warns that the wide layout encourages drivers to speed and that crossing the street feels risky, especially for families and students who walk to nearby destinations.
“Picture yourself trying to run across Dale Mabry without a light… and how that feels,” she said, drawing a comparison meant to make the hazard tangible. For residents who walk children to school or live along the corridor, the changes are framed not as inconvenience but as protection. That view is bolstered by personal stories from locals who have been hurt while biking or crossing the street.
“I’ve personally been hit by a car while riding my bike,” Quinn Rukholm said, and that kind of testimony fuels the urgency some community members feel. Safety anecdotes like Rukholm’s are powerful in neighborhood meetings and can sway public opinion when combined with data on speeds and crashes. City staff say they want to balance those human stories with traffic modeling before locking in a final plan.
For now the project sits in procurement as Tampa seeks a contractor, and the timing has been pushed back while officials collect more public input. The city will host an open house at Jan Platt Library where neighbors can ask questions, see designs and register concerns before decisions proceed. Expect a lot of local voices at that meeting; this is exactly the kind of neighborhood fight that shapes how South Tampa streets look and feel for years to come.
