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The state has little more than a year to meet a construction deadline for a high-speed rail and find a way to finance its potential $20-billion cost.
By JEAN HELLER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published September 22, 2002
Dr. Jaih Jackson spends 2 1/2 hours a day driving between his St. Petersburg home and a Plant City public health clinic where he provides dentistry to migrant workers.
Jackson says he wants to give something back, but he won't be sorry six months from now when his four-year commitment to the clinic is over. It's not the job that bugs him. It's the commute.
"It's 30,000 miles a year on my car, $20 in gas every three days, (Interstate) 275 is a mess from the Howard Frankland to I-4, and now they're starting construction on Malfunction Junction," Jackson said.
Would he use a high-speed train?
"Absolutely, yes," Jackson said. "I wouldn't care too much what it cost, either. I doubt that it would be more than what I spend now on my car each week."
Almost two years ago, Florida voters surprised everyone and approved a constitutional amendment that requires the state to begin construction by November 2003 on a high-speed rail system that would link Florida's five largest cities. Phase One would link Orlando with the Tampa Bay area.
There has been a flurry of quiet activity aimed at accomplishing what the Constitution now requires, but with barely more than a year until the deadline, there is still no certainty that Florida will get high-speed rail, and no clear means to finance it.
"I was against it initially," said state Sen. Jim Sebesta, R-St. Petersburg, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee. "When it passed, I gave a zero chance to ever seeing it. Now it's up to 50-50."
It is Sebesta's fantasy to unveil a train that rides on a cushion of air, capable of speeds up to 350 miles an hour without any vibration and in total silence. But he acknowledges that fantasies are fine, as long as you don't have to pay for them.
Even with a less ambitions train, which might travel at 150 mph, the question remains: How will the state finance a luxury that could have a final price tag of $20-billion?
The Legislature created the Florida High-Speed Rail Authority to oversee the project and resolve the difficult issues. The authority has commissioned a pair of studies for potential investors. The studies will suggest the best routes for the trains, station locations, costs and ridership potential.
The studies are due in December. On Oct. 3, the authority will issue requests for proposals to 11 private investors who have expressed an interest in building and operating a high-speed rail here.
The proposals are due in February, a critical date because in March the Legislature will have to decide whether the the project is viable, and if it isn't, whether to ask voters in another constitutional amendment to repeal the first one.
State Sen. Ron Klein, D-Delray Beach, prepared a repeal amendment for this November's ballot, but was persuaded to withdraw it to give the process a chance to work. If it doesn't, and Klein is certain it won't, he will introduce a bill next session that either asks for repeal of the rail amendment or sets out in specific terms how it will be financed.
"I do not believe the private sector is going to pay for this," Klein said. "What I'm concerned about is an open-ended state checkbook that would drain a lot of resources, including money to solve local transportation issues, like moving people between Tampa and St. Petersburg, between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. That's where we have problems, not moving people between Orlando and Miami."
Sebesta says the state will find itself in one of three situations when the February deadline for proposals arrives:
-- One or more investors could step up and pay for everything, including design, construction, operations, maintenance and financing.
-- One or more investors could offer to do everything but with only partial financing. If there is federal money available, and if the state's share of the cost doesn't exceed 20 percent -- most of which could be paid with in-kind contributions such as right of way along interstate medians -- it might still be doable.
-- The state must pay for everything.
"If it's Alternative No. 3, then we're back to square one," Sebesta said. "That's when Sen. Klein's amendment comes back and, frankly, I would support it."
And what would happen if the voters were asked to repeal the rail amendment and said instead that they meant what they voted for in the first place?
"Then we do it," Sebesta said.
How?
"I don't know. There aren't many options. There's no chance of finding money for high-speed rail in the budget. We either cut services or raise taxes. New taxes would put Florida in an increasingly non-competitive situation."
Yet even the keenest proponents of high-speed rail don't expect to get Alternative No. 1.
C.C. "Doc" Dockery, who put $2.7-million of his own money into a campaign to pass the rail amendment, is skeptical about private financing.
"We'll cross a big hurdle when we get private industry agreeing to provide operations, maintenance and guarantee ridership. That means zero taxpayer subsidy," said Dockery, a member of the rail authority. "I don't know a transportation project in the country financed by private industry."
He anticipates financing through state-issued bonds and federal contributions.
There are several bills in Congress that would provide federal dollars to underwrite the cost of high-speed rail throughout the country. Currently, the nation's only high-speed service is provided by Amtrak's Acela trains operating in the Boston-Washington, D.C. corridor. Pilot projects have been proposed in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, in Pittsburgh and between Anaheim, Calif., and Las Vegas.
A measure introduced in the U.S. House by Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, would provide $60-billion in loans, loan guarantees and loan credits to build high-speed rail systems.
"It probably won't be acted on this year because we're late in the session, but it will be reintroduced next year," said Steve Hansen, director of communications for the House Transportation Committee. "It would create state-federal partnerships and allow states to develop high-speed rail projects that meet Department of Transportation criteria."
Ray Chiaramonte of the Hillsborough County Planning Commission said high-speed rail would have made his life easier during the four years he commuted to Tampa from Celebration, near Orlando.
"I was in a van pool, which is easier and cheaper than driving your car," Chiaramonte said. "But still, I had to get up at 5 every morning. I had to have my clothes all laid out the night before. I had to take the world's fastest shower. We left at 5:35, and I'd get to work about 7. We left at 4:30, and I'd get home at 6:05.
"Toward the end of my living in Celebration, the commute was getting to me. It was making me sick. I would have loved a high-speed train."
Sebesta points to commuters like Jackson and Chiaramonte when asked where riders will come from. He also expects tourist ridership.
"You've got thousands and thousands of tourists from Europe and Asia who fly into Orlando to do the theme parks, and then a lot of them want to come west, to the beaches," he said, one reason he is adamant that the western terminus of the train be in St. Petersburg.
"About 100,000 cars a day commute between Pinellas and Hillsborough," he said. "If we can get 10 percent of those drivers onto a train, we've taken 10,000 cars off the roads. If you stop high-speed rail in Tampa, you're dumping thousands of people headed for the beaches into downtown Tampa and onto the interstates. It must come across the bridge."
But high-speed rail might require its own bridge, at a cost once estimated at $1.5-billion. A light rail alternative -- electric trains that run up to 60 mph -- could use the Howard Frankland or Gandy bridges, though it would need a new roadbed.
"These are things the studies will tell us," Sebesta said. "We'll know what we can do, if anything."