SY 848.6 Sulphur Springs ARE 898.4 St. Petersburg | SY 843.5 Gary | |
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The Clearwater Subdivision is a railroad line owned by CSX Transportation in the U.S. State of Florida. The line runs from Gary, Florida to St. Petersburg, Florida for a total of 48.6 miles. At its north end it continues south from the Tampa Terminal Subdivision and at its south end the track comes to an end.
The Clearwater Subdivision begins just east of downtown Tampa in Gary and heads north through some of Tampa's suburban neighborhoods. In Sulphur Springs, the Clearwater Subdivision turns and runs west though Oldsmar, where it crosses Tampa Bay. It shifts south briefly running through Safety Harbor, and then heads west again to Clearwater. In Clearwater, it turns southeast, running through Largo and Pinellas Park before terminating at First Avenue North in St. Petersburg near Tropicana Field.
History
From Tampa north to Sulphur Springs, the Clearwater Subdivision runs along the former Tampa Northern Railroad, which was built in 1908. From Sulphur Springs west to Clearwater, it runs along the former Tampa and Gulf Coast Railroad, which was built in 1914. Both the Tampa Northern Railroad and the Tampa and Gulf Coast Railroad were absorbed by the Seaboard Air Line Railroad in 1913 and 1915 respectively. From Clearwater to St. Petersburg, the line runs along the southern end of the historic Orange Belt Railway, which was built in 1888. It later became part of the Plant System, which soon after became part of the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad. Both the Atlantic Coast Line and the Seaboard Air Line networks merged in 1967 to form the Seaboard Coast Line Railroad before becoming part of CSX in 1980. Regularly-scheduled passenger rail service on the line ended on February 1, 1984, when Amtrak discontinued its rail services in Pinellas County.
In March 2008, the Clearwater Subdivision's trackage in downtown St. Petersburg began to be torn up, along with its remaining trackage south of Central Avenue and east of 34th Street South. That right-of-way, as well as the right-of-way of several other former CSX railroad lines in the county beginning in the 1990s, was converted into a section of the Pinellas Trail.
In 2015, CSX proposed to sell both the Clearwater and Brooksville subdivisions to the Florida Department of Transportation for potential use as commuter rail. FDOT is currently studying this possibility. Similar transactions between FDOT and CSX have taken place in the Miami and Orlando areas for tracks that today run the Tri-Rail and SunRail commuter lines respectively.