With private investors cold on the voter-mandated statewide rail system, a legislator says, let's aim for a bay area light rail system.
By JEAN HELLER
Published August 29, 2003
ST. PETERSBURG - Sen. Jim Sebesta is changing trains.
The St. Petersburg Republican, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee and a supporter of privately financed high-speed rail for the state, all but declared Thursday that the project approved by the voters is dead.
Private investors have shown little interest in the idea, the Legislature is offering no money for it and the governor is determined to repeal the constitutional amendment that mandates a statewide high-speed rail system. Combined, those factors led Sebesta to conclude that high-speed rail "isn't going to happen any time soon."
So, he assembled a wide range of city, county and state officials at a workshop Thursday at the Koger Center to propose an alternative: a regional light rail system.
Pinellas and Hillsborough counties have debated light rail extensively, but Sebesta raised the idea of integrating those systems and connecting them along the Howard Frankland Bridge. The Florida Department of Transportation has previously concluded that the bridge would be the best route for linking train systems across the bay.
"We can't simply keep adding lanes (to area highways)," Sebesta said. "There are 200,000 cars a day across the bay on our bridges. If we could put 10 percent, just 10 percent, of those people on light rail, that's 20,000 cars a day we get off our roads. ... We're going to do this. If we don't do it, we ought to be horsewhipped."
The group was overwhelmingly supportive of studying light rail, but there were questions about how such a project could be financed, and how soon.
"I think it's a good idea. I think we need to plan for the future," said state Rep. Sandy Murman, R-Tampa. "But there are some serious infrastructure problems that have to be resolved in Hillsborough before going for light rail - buses and roads. I think to throw funding into this is putting the cart before the horse."
Sebesta took volunteers to create an ad hoc subcommittee on the topic, which will meet within the next 10 days to discuss the feasibility of the plan. The full group that gathered Thursday will meet again in about two months.
For those holding onto the idea of high-speed rail, Sebesta had nothing but bad news.
"I had hoped we could talk about how high-speed rail is coming to the bay area, but it isn't going to happen any time soon," he said.
Only two companies bid on the project, and the bids were much higher than the $1.6-billion estimate for the first leg of the system, from Tampa to Orlando. One bid, in fact, was $2.6-billion. But worse, neither bidder was willing to finance construction privately.
"We needed private investment dollars, and we went after that hard," Sebesta said. "The state can't afford $70-million a year for 30 years. The High Speed Rail Authority is supposed to pick a preferred provider in October, or it can deep-six both of them and start the process over. But even if they pick a preferred provider, the Legislature hasn't appropriated one dime, and I don't think it will."
The group said regional light rail, which eventually would extend to Pasco and Polk counties among others, could be financed in part by state and federal money. It also could be supported through local means such as a penny or less increase in sales tax, another gasoline tax, impact fees, or a combination of revenue sources. Whatever the proposal, it would have to be approved by voters.
Hillsborough Commissioner Ronda Storms said the only way the system could work is if the bus systems in the two counties cooperate and everyone sheds the parochialism that often gets in the way of multicounty decisions.
Storms also said the rail system would need to run to the places people want to go.
"Remember," Storms said, "you're going to have to sell it to the voters who are going pay for it."
