I was in Florida for personal business this weekend. I managed to take a few pictures of downtowns Orlando and Saint Petersburg. I found them to be pretty similar. Both are rapidly redeveloping from being glorified office parks into bona fide urban centers. Both have plenty of activity and nightlife, but also an overabundance of empty lots. Both have good downtown circulator transit, but poor transit to the surrounding city. Orlando is below. Photos from Saint Petersburg
are here.
Unfortunately my time ran out before I got to the most pedestrianized / active part of downtown, but what I did manage to cover wasn't bad.
From the airplane:
Orlando has an eclectic mix of architecture.
I like the tallest building in town, on the right. I think the more ornate but not necessarily neoclassicist version of post modernism will turn out to be pretty timeless, when all is said and done.
I like this one a lot, as well. I think it's a court house.
As I said, Orlando's downtown bus infrastructure is pretty good. It doesn't seem like the service is very good outside of downtown, but downtown itself is covered.
Here's the main bus station:
The bus station is located adjacent to train tracks. Hopefully someday it will be easy to convert it to a multi-modal depot with passenger rail.
My biggest shock was that Orlando has a busway. Turns out it's
very short, really just a downtown circulator, but still.
I like their separation technique. Simple, inexpensive, but effective.
Can't say I'm a fan of the silly name, but whatchagonnado. OTOH, the free ride is nice. I used it.
Pretty nice stops.
Signal priority and everything.
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