Photo by the City of St. Petersburg
By Alisha Durosier
On Thursday nights, the streets of downtown St. Petersburg become a light show.
Seen and heard minutes before they fill the streets, St. Pete Float Fleet — a group of plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) riders — gather every Thursday at Vinoy Park for their weekly “float” around the city.
The group was started in 2020, and since then, has never let a week conclude without organizing a ride.
“We have an amazing group here… from doctors, lawyers, down to waitresses and barbacks, 7-year-olds to 70-year-olds,” said St. Pete Float Fleet founder Brian Frebe Jr..
St. Pete Float Fleet’s Thursday night cruises are just a glimpse of a larger culture growing in St. Petersburg, one that revolves around bicycles and PEVs. Demonstrated by the countless cycling groups around the city, all catering to various niches, St. Petersburg’s community of riders is almost immeasurable.
“St. Pete has changed a lot in the past 10 years… I have witnessed the gradual culture change going in a direction which I would say bends towards being strong for bicyclists and pedestrians,” said Brian Peret, a ride leader for the bike group St. Pete Critical Mass.
Peret has enjoyed biking for the majority of his life. He started driving in 2008, when he moved back to Florida from Madison, Wisconsin — a platinum-level bicycle friendly city, certified by the League of American Bicyclists. In 2020, six years after moving to St. Petersburg and returning to his love of biking, he started riding with St. Pete Critical Mass. He became a ride leader as the group’s previous leaders were transitioning out.
According to Peret, the number of riders were dwindling.
“When I started leading them, we would have six, maybe 12. If we got 20 people it was a good ride. And word-of-mouth spread and it just kept growing,” Peret said.
Now, if the weather is on their side, St. Pete Critical Mass ride leaders can expect at least 200 cyclists to attend the group rides.
727 Ride Out, another local bike group, experienced a similar growth spurt since it was founded in 2020. The Facebook group started with three administrators and two members.
“Now we have six admins and 3,000 members,” said Todd Baroni, a ride leader of 727 Ride Out.
There was a noticeable uptick from 2020 to 2021 during the COVID-19 pandemic, with a significant spike in bike sales and a collective desire to find community.
“I’ve been riding bikes since I was a kid, but got back into it during the pandemic,” said Jason Bryant, another ride leader for 727 Ride Out. Bryant initially joined the group as a way to stay in shape. “I knew that this is where I wanted to be,” he said, reminiscing about his first ride with the group.
Most of the current riders of the St. Pete Float Fleet were invited to join by friends, some even commuting from Tampa Bay cities as far as Tarpon Springs to participate. The group has since become a close-knit Community.
“It’s definitely a family to us and if you ask anybody here, they would probably say yeah it’s kind of like a family scene, we all love each other,” Frebe said.
Bryant said his favorite part about riding, apart from the sense of freedom, is the diversity of the group rides. Riding is becoming more accessible, which is manifesting into a more diverse range of riders.
The bikes themselves “become expressions of their (cyclists) own personality,” Peret said.
“It literally doesn’t matter who you are… everybody still comes out here and rides,” Bryant said.
Bikes and the framework of St. Petersburg
Cheryl Stacks, the transportation manager for the City of St. Petersburg, told The Crow’s Nest, bike culture has grown with the city.
As Vanessa Wheeler, a pedestrian and bicycle specialist for the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR), puts it, the shift in how people think about getting from point A to point B parallels St. Petersburg’s evolving infrastructure.
“Build it and they will come,” Wheeler said.
On top of the Pinellas Trail, which to bicyclists is the “artery” of the city, St. Petersburg has implemented policy and infrastructure in recent years to further accommodate riders.
In 2015, the city adopted the Complete Streets Implementation Plan, an initiative to enhance St. Petersburg’s preexisting grid system to provide “comfortable mobility options for all modes of travel.” Complete Streets established bicycle parking, more connectivity and greenways conducive to riders and pedestrians.
“We’re not a city of cul-de-sac,” Wheeler said. “We actually have a grid that connects from A to B.”
The St. Petersburg grid system disperses traffic and provides cyclists with a variety of road options, according to Stacks.
“A different infrastructure is really a key factor in making sure that bicycling feels safe and comfortable for a lot of different people,” she said.
Stacks began working for the city shortly after they adopted a bicycle pedestrian master plan known as CityTrails in 2003. Serving as a building block for the current implementation strategy, the 2003 master plan promised that “pedestrian and bicycle facilities shall be designed, encouraged, and celebrated as indicators of a healthy city.”
The CityTrails plan extended the Pinellas Trail into downtown St. Petersburg, developing an additional 34 miles in trails and 74 miles in bicycle lanes. CityTrails also created the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC), a body of residents who advise the city in bike and pedestrian centered initiatives.
Photo by the City of St. Petersburg
As a result of the efforts, St. Petersburg went from being recognized as a bronze-level bicycle friendly city to a silver-level bicycle friendly city by the League of American Bicyclists.
Advocacy in bike culture
The city’s push to create more accommodating infrastructure “has a grassroots component,” Wheeler said.
Navigating St. Petersburg as a cyclist can still be a challenge. So, for cyclists, advocates and group leaders, education is especially important.
In 2018 the Wall Street Journal reported that Pinellas County was “the most dangerous place to bicycle in America.” In 2024, out of the 9,281 bicycle accidents reported in Florida, Pinellas County accounted for 801 of them. This is an increase from Florida’s 8,418 bicycle accidents reported in 2023, 652 of which occurred in Pinellas County.
Also in 2024, the Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater region ranked as the eighth most dangerous metro area for pedestrians in the U.S.
“We still got a long way to go,” said Peret, who is also a member of the BPAC. He mostly organizes St. Pete Critical Mass’s bike routes to go north and south, east of Fourth Street — a street known to be difficult to maneuver by bike. Peret explains that like other cyclists, he also avoids traveling east and west in St. Petersburg
“Outside of First Avenue, east and west, and the trail that’s south of that. If you want to go east and west in the city of St. Petersburg, it’s a lot of good luck,” he said.
For cyclists and advocates, education take many forms. From sharing information said in BPAC meetings to suggesting best practices for addressing bicycle and pedestrian deaths to the media.
The group rides are also a form of advocacy. They double as a way to bring awareness towards the presence of riders in St. Petersburg and as an enjoyable activity.
As Wheeler notes, group rides are a demonstration of empowerment. In addition to accommodating riders with infrastructure changes and resources, group rides “demonstrate that bicycling is doable and accessible,” Wheeler said.
According to Peret there is no singular thing that makes riding, particularly in community, special.
“When somebody’s never done a ride like that, when it’s over and I see them, the smile on their face, I remember my first feeling of being in the midst of that. With the music and the lights and the friends and the positivity, it can be spiritual,” Peret said. “You really have to experience it to feel it.”
