Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 26, 2009, at 6:46 am
I was on Rob Lorei’s Florida This Week last Friday and was asked to lead off discussion of Florida’s chances of getting high-speed rail. I was taken by surprise, because I had studied Barack Obama’s stimulus plan extensively, especially its engineering aspects, for a freelance piece I did for the UF Engineering College alumni magazine and didn’t remember any money being set aside for high-speed rail in Florida.
It turns out that even Obama himself mentioned Florida as a possible recipient in a recent speech. But I’m guessing that it’s more of a hope than a reality, and a South Florida Sun-Sentinel story lays out the problems with Florida being competitive for some of $8 billion set aside in stimulus dollars for a Miami-Orlando-Tampa high-speed train:
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 19, 2009, at 9:26 am
You may recall from this blog earlier in the year that the state was considering, to be quite blunt about it, selling the stretch of I-75 known as Alligator Alley (across the Everglades and Big Cypress Swamp) to the highest bidder, who would pay the state upfront and then collect the tolls on it for decades to come. (Technically, it was a long-term lease, but the net effect is the same.)
The plan sucked. And now, one South Florida lawmaker tells the Fort Myers News-Press, it is dead, at least for now:
Alligator Alley will remain in the hands of the state, for now. The Florida Department of Transportation received no bids to lease the 78-mile section of Interstate 75 by Monday’s deadline.
Sen. Dave Aronberg, D-Greenacres, said he hopes the state’s efforts to lease the alley are over.
“This idea was ill-conceived from the very beginning. It was sped through the process with minimal public input, and it deserves to be dead and buried forever,” said Aronberg, whose bill to bar foreign companies from leasing state roads did not pass during session.
“It was a bad deal for taxpayers, a bad deal for the state of Florida and would have set a dangerous precedent.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 8, 2009, at 6:48 am
The controversial Orlando light rail plan, known as SunRail or the CSX deal to opponents, just won’t die. Today’s Orlando Sentinel is reporting that the city’s mayor, Buddy Dyer, is vowing that “nothing is off the table” when it comes to trying to figure out how to resurrect the twice-killed plan.
Today is the 52nd day of the 2009 Legislative session.
The House and Senate are meeting in Session today to consider passage of bills that have completed the committee process. Bills heard “on the Floor” are on first placed on a “Special Order Calendar” where they are read (for the second time), debated, and amended. Bills taken up on Special Order move to “3rd reading.” The Florida Constitution requires bills to be read three times before a chamber can pass the bill.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Apr. 6, 2009, at 5:00 am
On the Friday after his Hillsborough County Commission voted 7-0 to start the ball rolling for a 2010 sales-tax increase referendum to pay for transportation improvements, Commissioner Mark Sharpe sat down for the HoCast recording session to talk about how we must embrace better mass transit, including light rail.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 3, 2009, at 11:24 am
The White House today is touting new estimates on job creation from the stimulas bill by the end of 2010. That’s $28 billion worth of asphalt-layin’, engineerin’, project managin’, right-of-way buyin’ work.
Florida gets $1.3 billion of that, with $52 million of the state’s share going to the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, the second-biggest allocation after Miami.
The administration’s press release from today is after the jump.
That money will not be enough to pay for a single bullet train, transportation experts say. And by the time the $8 billion gets divided among the 11 regions across the country that the government has designated as high-speed rail corridors, they say, it is unlikely to do much beyond paying for long-delayed improvements to passenger lines, and making a modest investment in California’s plan for a true bullet train.
In the short term, the money – inserted at the 11th hour by the White House – could put people to work improving tracks, crossings and signal systems.
That could help more trains reach speeds of 90 to 110 miles per hour, which is much faster than they currently go. It is much slower, however, than high-speed trains elsewhere, like the 180 mph of the newest Japanese bullet train. (The Acela trains on the East Coast are capable of 150 mph, but average about half that.)
That includes the I-4 corridor, which is envisioned for a high-speed system shuttling folks between Orlando’s theme parks and Pinellas’ beaches.
America is in a recession, and Floridians have not been spared. Florida’s unemployment rate is 8.1 percent, higher than the national rate of 7.2 percent. It seems as if every day, newspapers throughout the state report layoffs by Florida companies. Last year, Florida lost 255,000 jobs.
Times are tough, and the full attention of our elected leaders should be given to economic recovery, transition and job growth. While Florida is faced with the same economic challenges as the rest of the nation, we are fortunate to have a governor who understands the need to invest in long-term transportation solutions even in these tough times.
By Kelly Cornelius
PoHo contributor & R-LAND activist
This new CSX deal is so ugly it would make a freight train take a dirt road. It would cost taxpayers $1.2 billion, but according to this recent Orlando Sentinel article, that number could go up. According to a recent news release from Senator Paula Dockery, an opponent of the deal, the number is actually at $2.66 BILLION! She had the Florida Department of Transportation do a detailed cost estimate and this is what it produced.
Wasn’t this rotten deal only a paltry $649 million last year? I guess train track prices don’t go down in a recession, and neither did the number of disturbing details about this deal. Still present are the liability issues sticking taxpayers with the bill for negligence, the location issue (that send freight trains through downtown Lakeland) and, of course, there is that little matter of the cost. Not to mention the backroom way in which this scheme was originally cooked up. Taxpayers are getting totally railroaded. Some research finds that CSX is not a stranger to screwing Florida taxpayers; check out this article.
The Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority Board will hear a staff report this afternoon on the feasibility of closing the upper tier of the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway to cars on Sundays so bicyclists can use it.
The proposal, brought up by a coalition of Tampa Bay area bicycle stores and bicyclists at last month’s board meeting, asked officials to look into the idea of closing the elevated lanes on one or a few Sundays a month for two to three hours in the morning. The closure would allow bikers to ride the upper deck, typically used for commutes in heavy traffic during the week.
“Hopefully, they (board members) will understand the minimal impact this would have on tolls,” said Alan Snel, director of the bike coalition. “Our area lost the Friendship Trail Bridge and we are very tentative about using roads. I think bicyclists would really embrace this.”
The authority board will hear the bikeway staff report at 3 p.m. at its 1104 Twiggs St. offices in downtown Tampa.
Remember Chapter One of the Lithia Pinecrest Chronicles – A Road Widening, Some More Lying and We Just Ain’t Buying? Turns out we might not buy it but it looks like we sure as hell are paying for it! The reason this whole controversy regarding this road PD and E study started is that the consultants doing the study to possibly widen Lithia Pinecrest told citizens (screaming about the rural section of the study) that they had to study 6 lanes to be eligible for Federal Dollars (that argument didn’t really hold up) so then they used the logical termini defense for federal dollars and that one is at best arguable. There is one thing they all seem to agree on and that is the fact that the study can’t be predetermined according to Federal guidelines.
Enter a 10+ acre parcel of land off Lithia Pinecrest and Valrico in 2006 for sale for possible right of way (ROW). Read the rest of this entry »
I attended the recent swearing in of Kevin Beckner (so that is what all of you Obama supporters felt like?) Still fresh from the euphoria of seeing a good guy win one (and watching incumbent Commissioner Brian Blair go down in flames), I later headed down to the public workshop that evening regarding the Lithia Pinecrest road widening project in eastern Hillsborough County. I had like six or seven hours in between these two events to just be happy that the people of Hillsborough made a good decision electing Beckner and since Commissioner Kevin “the people have spoken and I am switching teams” White (a longtime pro-development vote) seems to have gotten the message, just maybe NOW the residents would have a majority on the board (so that is what the late Ralph Hughes must have felt like!)
Hey, six hours of hope was good, wasn’t it? Turns out we have been duped by our county AGAIN! When Iand many others attended a meeting last year regarding the widening of Lithia Pinecrest we were told that the rural portion of it (now known as segment D) from Fishhawk to State Road 39 would NOT be widened. The staff assured us…………assured us.
That is why I thought it was fishy when I read this article promoting this year’s meeting that said it could to be 6 lanes all the way through. WTF? In fact, all I remember them talking about last year was possibly 4 lanes and that was only in the urban sections, so to read that they were now talking about 6 lanes all the way through raised many suspicions. So many of us decide to attend this year’s meeting, and it was Beltway deja vu. Lies, circles, and deflections.
There are sections of Lithia Pinecrest that are overloaded by traffic and need relief, but those are in the Urban Service Area, and make no mistake about it, those sections failed because new home construction was approved without appropriate infrastructure. You can thank past and a few current county commissioners for that. The section I am referring to is in the Rural Service Area and it serves us rural types just fine, thanks. Why are we opposed to widening on this particular stretch? Because plowing a bigger road through a rural area is nothing more than a recipe for sprawl. Six lanes with a median is 1-75!
We have been down this road before……..and we destroyed it!
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Nov. 18, 2008, at 10:06 am
Today is investiture day for county commissioners on both sides of Tampa Bay. The contrast between what these new additions to the county boards means is stark.
In Tampa, where the Hillsborough County government has veered irresponsibly to the right over the past decade, the election of one man is going to make a huge difference. Kevin Beckner beat Brian Blair, who had formed a bloc with commissioners Ken Hagan and Jim Norman, often picking up votes from Democrat Kevin White and GOP colleague Al Higginbotham to approve pro-business, pro-development and anti-tolerance measures. Already, however, that power seems to have shifted, if only on certain issues. Beckner would vote with commissioners White, Rose Ferlita and Mark Sharpe to put a sales tax increase for rail transit on the ballot in 2010, a progressive move sought by Mayor Pam Iorio that the conservative bloc on the board fought against for years.
The new additions to the centrist Pinellas County Commission move that board further to the right, with one bringing a strong fiscal conservative bent (Neil Brickfield) and the other bringing social conservative credentials (Nancy Bostock). Don’t expect to see the Pinellas board ever become as intolerant or destructive as the 1996-2008 Hillsborough boards were, but an inexorable shift toward less government is definitely in the cards.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jul. 31, 2008, at 4:18 pm
TBO.com’s transportation reporter Rich Shopes puts Pam Iorio ahead of the rest of her TBARTA board colleagues this morning in a story about her desire to get a Tampa-centric rail system in front of Hillsborough voters in 2010. From the article:
“I think the city is ready,” she said this week. “I think the people are ready.”
Some members of that regional authority, the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, or TBARTA, think Iorio is jumping the gun.
“We need the support of multiple counties to make this work,” Clearwater mayor and TBARTA board member Frank Hibbard said.
TBARTA has had a pretty unified front until now, and while this isn’t much of a crack in that facade, it is a crack. But Iorio has increasingly been strident about her desire for a USF-downtown-airport rail line going in front of the voters, given that it will take a decade to build if it is approved in 2010. That puts rail, at its earliest, in the year 2020.
A month ago I sat down with Iorio for a 35-minute interview and she talked about transit as part of her explanation of why she is so methodical (and slow) in her decisionmaking. Here’s that excerpt:
I think being methodical works well because that’s my style, so I can’t be anything different than that. When you bring people in, you don’t make rash decisions. I give the example of the discussion of mass transit. I started three years ago in the State of the City speech saying we need to focus on transit and our bus system is very poor. Well then that started a particular cycle of conversation. Then the next State of the City speech I upped it a little bit and starting talking about, now we have to have light rail and then I produced a white paper on rail and how we had to take the Tampa plan and dust it off and re-do and get the MPO going. So that’s what we did.
Now here we are in 2008, and I think it’s been a pretty methodical approach of introducing the topic, of showing an interest in the topic, getting the MPO engaged to redo their plan, working with the Partnership to get TBARTA. It’s been a methodical process over the past three years. So you can say, well, why not just declare that we need to have light rail and go for it? Because it doesn’t work that way. That’s not how communities get light rail. No one just goes for it. It’s got to be a community consensus. You’ve got to build a dialogue. You have to get to the pont where other elected officials feel comfortable stepping out and saying, Yeah I’ll support a referendum for that.
But they’re not going to get to that point overnight. It’s got to become part of the community debate and consciousness. Now, today, light rail is an acceptable conversation for anyone to have. We’re talking about going to referendum in 2010, and I’m trying to push for a starter line that’s going to be from USF to downtown to Westshore. So there’s an example of something that you start by planting the seed of what should be a community dialogue and you start by taking the steps and it begins to evolve.
It remains to be seen whether Hillsborough County commissioners, who generally seem disinterested in the TBARTA process, would vote to put a transit tax on the 2010 ballot for Iorio.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 23, 2008, at 12:08 pm
From your soon-to-be-receiving-$2 million-in-tax-dollars-unless-Gov.-Crist-vetoes-the-money transportation agency, TBARTA:
More than four out of five Tampa Bay region residents say that traffic congestion is a serious problem, and there is widespread support for addressing the region’s traffic challenges with a regional approach that includes commuter rail and mass transit. These findings come from a public opinion survey on regional transportation issues conducted recently by the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority (TBARTA), which was formed in 2007 by the Florida state legislature and tasked with developing a mass transportation plan for the seven counties surrounding Tampa Bay.
Overall, survey respondents cited traffic congestion as a significant problem in the Tampa region. Across all counties, 60 percent of survey respondents rate traffic congestion as an “extremely serious” or “very serious” problem, compared to 9 percent who rate it as “not serious.”
The survey results indicate that traffic congestion is viewed by residents in the Greater Tampa Bay area as a problem that requires a regional strategy. Survey respondents generally favor transit investments over more road building: 59 percent agree with a statement that “highways and roads alone aren’t enough. . . we need commuter rail and more mass transit to reduce traffic congestion,” compared to 34 percent who agree with an opposing statement that argued “build more roads and highways … light rail and mass transit are too expensive and ineffective because not enough people use them to justify the high cost.”
Also, respondents favor an integrated, regional transit planning approach over a county-by-county approach. Nearly two-thirds (63 percent) agree with the statement that counties in the greater Tampa Bay region “should join together and jointly plan an integrated regional transportation solution,” while 31 percent agree with an opposing statement that “each individual county should develop its own plans and transit systems.”
Oh, and the public says it has no idea who TBARTA is:
Another key finding is that while TBARTA is still largely unfamiliar among Greater Tampa Bay area region residents, there is strong support for the creation of the organization and its goals. When survey respondents were first provided with basic information about TBARTA and its mission, and then asked whether they believed such an organization was a good or bad idea, 69 percent agree that such an organization is a “good idea.”
C’mon, my peeps, we did a whole cover story on these guys. Ahh, the awesome power of the press.
It’s time to stick it to the oil man. I don’t know about you, but I am getting alarmed, and going broke, over gas prices.
My small Civic is no longer as economical as it was just a few years ago. It still seems hard to imagine a car that gets around 30 miles per gallon (highway) could ever be considered a gas guzzler. However, with the price of gasoline rising rapidly, every time I look at my gas gauge my bank account dies a little more inside. Thirty miles per gallon (highway) just isn’t cutting it like it used to.
But could there be a better way? It seems there is an alternative.
Today is National Bike to Work Day. It’s too late for me to take advantage of this now, as I already (foolishly) drove into the office, but this could be a perfect solution to the rising price of the dino-juice.
If I would have known about this earlier, I could have saddled up the old Schwinn, put my coffee cup in the cup holder (note to self: get a cup holder for the Schwinn), thrown my backpack into the basket (note to self: saddle bags are way cooler), and lead by example.
I would be laughing at my one-day usurpation of big oil as I pedaled along the side of I-275 North on my 25-mile commute from St. Petersburg to Tampa. Of course I would be tempting death as I dodged the foolish, petroleum-dependent commuters flying by just inches away at 80 miles per hour. Biking 25 miles along a busy interstate could be, well, scary, since the Tampa Bay area is not always the most bike-friendly place.
Of course, once at the office I would need to take a shower and change clothes so as not to offend the staff. It is basically summer out there, after all, and the sweltering heat could certainly overpower Right Guard Sport gel. Since there is no shower here, I would have to settle for a bird-bath in the bathroom sink. Also, I would have to leave a little earlier to arrive on time. Like maybe two hours earlier to account for short breaks along the way. This means going to bed, and getting up, earlier. That’s not cool. . .
And the bike has no stereo or lumbar seating.
Actually, this biking-to-work idea may not be as practical for me as I wish it were. With some time to seriously consider it, a $3 to $4 commute (albeit both ways) in the car seems like maybe a better idea for now.
Of course, if gas prices rise to $10 per gallon, I’ll have to seriously reconsider it. Maybe I will. Next year.
Senate leaders announced late Wednesday they were stripping a transportation bill of the legal protections CSX Corp. says it needs to pave the way for Central Florida’s commuter rail deal.
Claiming the huge bill loaded with projects for other regions like South Florida was being weighted down by the controversial rail deal, Senate Transportation Chairman Carey ["Truck Nutz"] Baker, R-Eustis, said he would gut the CSX legal protections and framwork for the deal to buy the 61-mile line.
Pro-deal forces like the Central Florida Partnership had lobbied hard for the deal, including commissioning a poll that showed positive public sentiment for the generic concepts of more rail and more freight as green endeavors. In sheer anger at not getting his way, Polk Sen. J.D. “Related to Katherine Harris so you know he carries at least the recessive gene for nuttiness” Alexander, who has financial interests in opening up the heartland of Florida to more development, lashed out at his colleagues:
In retaliation, Sen. J.D. Alexander of Winter Haven had filed an amendment to strike the $45 million state subsidy Tallahassee sends to the Tri-Rail system in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties — complaining that lawmakers who were fighting central Florida’s rail project were benefiting from the same legal protections in their region.
“At the end of the day I hope we build commuter rail first in Orlando,” he said. “Whatever our policy is, it should be the policy for the entire state. We shouldn’t have a South Florida policy and a Central Florida policy.”
A new poll obviously testing the waters for the pending Central Florida rail deal is being circulated behind the scenes but has not been made public yet. We snagged a copy, but more about the pro-rail results later. First, some background.
The proposed deal to lease back some of the CSX rail lines in Orlando started (very, very quietly if not exactly secretly) under Gov. Jeb Bush, and even today, it has received little attention in any local press except for the Tampa Tribune (whose coverage has been so strident it managed to really piss off the former gov recently). That means few have read the stuff or understand the importance of the issue to Tampa Bay and its own rail dreams.
In a nutshell, in the interest of getting a rail corridor for a commuter line from Orlando to here, the state has negotiated a controversial deal to pay freight hauler CSX $491 million to use its tracks in Orlando for commuter rail and to agree not to sue CSX for anything that happens on those tracks, even if it is the rail company’s fault. (Irking some folks is the fact that we, the taxpayers, gave CSX those rail rights of way for pennies back in the day.)
As part of the deal, CSX would shift some of its freight operations to other tracks and build a new hub in Polk County, and that has raised some eyebrows in Lakeland and Polk County as residents realized they could see a lot more freight train traffic coming their way as as result.
Two bills, HB 1399 and SB 1978, are set for votes this week as it comes down to the wire to see if the deal survives. Today, PoHo obtained a copy of a poll done on the issue of commuter rail and freight traffic that shows widespread public support for the concepts of more freight and commuter rail traffic but that pointedly doesn’t mention “the CSX deal.”
Lutz civic activist Dee Layne called the deal a “giveaway” in her latest legislative roundup, posted to this blog earlier today.
The poll — only some of which was given to this blog by two political operatives who requested anonymity because they are not authorized to release the results — was done by the Market Enhancement Group’s Barry Quarles. The polling presentation doesn’t reveal who paid for it.
UPDATE: On Tuesday, the patrons of the poll came forward — the Central Florida Partnership. From their news release: “”It’s very clear that residents of these two counties support more fuel efficient transportation and that they are concerned with the impact of greenhouse gas emissions from excessive traffic,” said Jacob V. Stuart, President of the Central Florida Partnership. “While we know there’s support in the seven-county Central Florida Region, policy makers should find it interesting that nearly three-quarters of the residents of these two counties – on one end of the I-4 corridor – think finding more fuel-efficient transportation should be a priority for state government.”
Here are the most interesting findings in the survey of 600 voters in Hillsborough and Polk counties:
73 percent of Polk voters and 68 percent of Hillsborough believe that “finding more fuel-efficient ways to transport people and goods should be a priority for state government in Florida.”
69 percent of Polk registered voters think there should be a “greater use of freight rail” if it “reduces greenhouse gas emissions.” 81 percent of Hillsborough voters agree with using more freight rail to cut trucking emissions.
Two-thirds of the registered voters in both counties said they would support government investments in rail infrastructure “if railroads are the most fuel-efficient form of ground transportation.”
Voters in both counties would supporter greater state investments in rail infrastructure if railroads would reduce highway congestion. The support was higher in Hillsborough (77 percent) than in Polk (67 percent), while the idea’s negatives were twice as high in Polk (17 percent said no to the question).
62 percent of the voters in both counties said they would supporter a commuter rail line in Orlando if it “would help Tampa secure its own commuter service in the future.”
What the market research shows, if it can be trusted, is that the concept of using state dollars to upgrade and use existing rails for commuter projects and more freight rail seems to be playing out a lot better with voters — if you don’t actually use specifics or the name of the deal or the name of the railroad, CSX, which has been pretty beat up in the Trib coverage.
Lost in some of the details (odious or not) of the CSX deal are the ramifications to Tampa Bay commuter rail. There’s no doubt that TBARTA, our regional rail authority, will be able to design and sell to the voters a commuter rail system with greater ease if hooking into an existing Orlando system is part of the equation. In fact, building a regional commuter rail here without an Orlando component seems downright stupid. TBARTA’s website, in fact, shows such a corridor to Lakeland and beyond to Orlando.
(Polling Methodology: A telephone survey of (self-proclaimed) registered voters in Hillsborough (300 respondents) and Polk (300). The margin of error is +/-5.8 percent in each individual county or +/-4.1 percent for the entire combined sample. That means that 95 percent of the time, you would get the same results within those margins if you conducted the same poll over and over again.)
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Mar. 20, 2008, at 1:31 pm
Just another example of Floridians’ hypocrisy when it comes to even the most simple upkeep of our roads, bridges, parks, etc. This time, the case is over in the Pinellas beaches, on the toll-road called the Pinellas Bayway.
Two legislators dropped plans for a higher toll to pay for needed replacement spans on the Bayway after public outrage. Their legislation would have raised tolls from 35-50 cents a trip to as much as $2.50. The Timesreports:
“This year? It’s deader than a doornail — I mean it is flat, Black Flag dead,” said state Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole, who sponsored bills with Rep. Jim Frishe, R-Belleair Bluffs.
The result is that the cost for the new bridges will now inevitably be spread out onto all taxpayers instead of directed to those folks who live and play on the beaches, the very people who use the damned Bayway in the first place. That sounds fair, at least to groups such as the Citizens Bayway Task Force.
This is just the latest in a decades-long string of Florida stinginess for the basics of civic life and taking care of our infrastructure. The latest tax reform proposal, for instance, would do away with $9-11 billion of education funding that had been tied to property taxes and that would not be replaced with a swap-out 1 percent increase in sales taxes (which are much less stable a funding source and a regressive tax, to boot).
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Oct. 26, 2007, at 11:03 am
The agency that will solve all our transportation problems with a former star linebacker at the helm finally has a new website. It is here. (h/t to Tampa Rail)
I’m watching the TBARTA meeting as I write this (on HTV22 if you are in Hillsborough). I was there in person for the first 90 minutes; it was about as exciting as watching snails fuck. You have to wonder how long the major politicos (Iorio, Baker et al.) will put up with attending these kinds of tedious meetings.
Having said that, and despite Chairman Quarles shaky start reading his prepared “How To Run A Govt Meeting” script, they have been setting goals this morning and it does sound like they are focused on transit and the things that will really help this region. They have until July 1, 2009, to come up with a long-term regional plan for transportation.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Oct. 25, 2007, at 9:46 am
Government officials lying to their citizenry?? Say it ain’t so. Here’s my tale of the good people of rural Lithia (such as Marlee Clouston shown above) and the Sprawlway plan that might pave their horse-lovin’ paradise.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Oct. 9, 2007, at 2:30 pm
Tomorrow’s issue of Creative Loafingwill feature my cover story on the man who is supposed to lead us out of our transportation morass and unclog those highway traffic jams: former Bucs LB Shelton Quarles.
It was Quarles, after all, who Gov. Charlie Crist drafted in the late rounds to be chairman of the new Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, the seven-county agency that has two years to come up with a unified transportation (and mass transit) plan for Tampa Bay. It also has the power to borrow money to build roads and transit systems, as well as asking voters to approve possible tax increases. Given the complexity of the issue and the enormity of the political egos and turfs involved, Quarles’ appointment raised more than a few eyebrows.
What do you think? Stroke of brilliance or debacle in the making?
Here’s a link to the entire cover package, and as a PoHo Extra!! (TM pending), here are some outtakes of my conversation with Quarles’ fellow TBARTA board member, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who said she started as a TBARTA skeptic given how many other transportation agencies already exist:
“Then I became a true believer, because I realized that it was the only way to do it. It really became apparent to me that unless we had a regional authority, we were never going to get there [and have an operational transit and roads system]. It absolutely forces statutory language, that there shall be a regional transportation plan and it will include transit.
“It isn’t that we are short of plans; we seem to have plenty of plans. But there’s been no group that had the authority to pull it all together. And this group can fund it, can bond roads.
[Regarding Quarles as TBARTA chairman:] “It’s not a typical appointment to an authority. It’s not often that a sports figure is appointed to head up an authority like this. It’s not something where you make this connection. [But Iorio said Quarles brings something to the transit equation that it doesn't have, with its myriad MPOs, DOTs, ISTEA funding, etc.] All the different acronyms. We’ve got all that. We do that. Then it’s got to be sold to the public. I think it helps us to have a well-known professional NFL player to help sell the plan to the public. It’s a different type of spokesman.
“[Quarles is] going to be someone who has real appeal with people, who has name recognition, who comes at it from a different angle. I view it in a positive way.
“There’s still a lot of fundamental work to be accomplished. For the next two years, nothing quick is going to happen. I think there are some incremental steps that need to be taken, [such as merging the Hillsborough and Pinellas bus systems]. I am going to try my hardest to make sure that TBARTA’s work is talked about in Tampa.”
Posted by Wayne Garcia on Jun. 28, 2007, at 12:39 pm
Stuart Rogel, head of the Tampa Bay Partnership business group that spearheaded the effort to fix our transportation mess, reports via e-mail that Gov. Charlie Crist signed the bill creating TBARTA, the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority. The new region-wide (except for Polk County) authority could (emphasis on could) provide the political muscle needed to redraw our increasingly futile efforts at roadbuilding into something that would mix rail, buses and appropriate surface roads.
The bad news: a few weeks back Crist vetoed the $1 million in startup money for the agency, putting it at least one more year behind in the catch-up effort to make Tampa Bay a more livable place.
Posted by Wayne Garcia on May. 18, 2007, at 12:41 pm
If Tampa Bay has any hope of being liveable in 50 years, after absorbing another 3.2 million people from Brooksville to south of Sarasota, then the answer may lie in a stack of yellow and red Legos sitting on 30 tables in the Tampa Convention Center.
Business and civic leaders from seven counties are taking part in Reality Check Tampa Bay, a visioning and planning session put together by the Tampa Bay Partnership. The 300 participants included elected officials from all over the greater Tampa Bay region, including the “Big Three” mayors, Pam Iorio of Tampa, Rick Baker of St. Petersburg and Frank Hibbard of Clearwater.
The exercise put eight of the leaders at a table with stacks of children’s toys and colored ribbon. They had 90 minutes to plan the next 50 years. The Legos represented people (yellow) and jobs (red) that will come to this region during the upcoming half-century. The ribbons were road corridors (orange) and transit lines (purple).
It was Quarles, after all, who Gov. Charlie Crist drafted in the late rounds to be chairman of the new Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, the seven-county agency that has two years to come up with a unified transportation (and mass transit) plan for Tampa Bay. It also has the power to borrow money to build roads and transit systems, as well as asking voters to approve possible tax increases. Given the complexity of the issue and the enormity of the political egos and turfs involved, Quarles’ appointment raised more than a few eyebrows.
