Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Who will pay to improve roads?

Because of rising costs, state funding is drying up. Unless the county or developers pay, some projects won't get done.

By DAN DEWITT
Published June 25, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - State Road 50 just west of Brooksville was widened to four lanes less than a decade ago and still seems like more highway than is needed along that stretch.

It passes woods, pasture and the isolated grounds of Brooksville Regional Hospital. Even during morning rush hour, the space between cars often stretches beyond 100 yards.

But think ahead to 2025, said Dennis Dix, the county's transportation coordinator. Medical offices and condominiums will surround the hospital. The hundreds of acres to the north will be filled with subdivisions and shopping centers; the county's population could be as high as 277,000.

The road, meanwhile, may look exactly the same.

Because of the fast-rising cost of building roads, $45-million the state Department of Transportation had planned to use on this and two other sections of SR 50 will be absorbed by other projects in the county, including the higher-priority widening of SR 50 between the Suncoast Parkway and U.S. 19.

That means that unless the county or developers who build projects near SR 50 pay for improvements, three key sections of the major east-west thoroughfare will remain four lanes rather than six: the 4-mile stretch between the Suncoast Parkway and the Brooksville truck bypass, the bypass itself, and a 1-mile section east of Interstate 75.

More bad news: The true cost of all this work is not $45-million, but $135-million, Dix said. Worse still, this does not cover other stretches of the road - such as sections farther east of the interstate - that need to be widened to accommodate expected increases in traffic.

"The problem is, there is nowhere near the funding needed to maintain the long-range transportation plan," Dix said. "Unless we come up with a significant local funding mechanism, we're going to be losing a significant number of improvements that we have in the plan."

The information about the shortfall of state funds comes on top of another sobering assessment.

The county passed its long-range transportation plan in early 2005; a year later, dramatically rising transportation costs forced the county to re-examine its feasibility. That study, performed by the consulting firm of Tindale-Oliver & Associates in Tampa, came to these conclusions:

The situation is the same across the state, said Bob Clifford, planning manager for the DOT district based in Tampa. He emphasized that the state has not pulled money out of Hernando, but that the price of the work has climbed far above the amount available to pay for it.

The underlying cause, he said, is a booming real estate market that forces the state to pay more for road rights of way and to compete with private builders for labor and materials - costs that escalated further after the devastating hurricane seasons of 2004 and 2005.

County Commission Chairwoman Diane Rowden said she does not see how the county can raise the money for these improvements considering the stance of Commissioners Robert Schenck and Jeff Stabins. Both recently spoke against raising the gas tax to cover a much smaller revenue shortfall - $1.4-million for the county's road-paving program. They did not return telephone calls to the Times on Friday.

"We don't have any long-range plans. We don't have any vision," Rowden said. "We have no alternative plans to fund what is happening to road costs."

Commissioner Nancy Robinson also opposes raising taxes, but agrees with Rowden on another point: Developers will have to pay their share.

"It's going to fall to development to step to the plate, pure and simple," she said.

And, in a major shift in recent years, developers are increasingly willing to pay for substantial road improvements.

"The state's leadership has placed the concept of growth paying for itself under the microscope," said Cliff Manuel, president of Coastal Engineering Associates of Brooksville. "I think it's a very healthy way to plan for a community."

This shift has come for two reasons, Manuel and others say. A growth management law passed by the state last year tightened what is known as "transportation concurrency." That means roads must be available to serve developments at the time they are built or shortly afterward.

To make sure local governments did not strike down developments that are not near adequate roads, lawmakers included a provision - called "proportionate share" - that allows developers to build if they pay for their share of needed road improvements.

The other reason that Hernando has seen more transportation agreements with developers is simply that it has seen more development, Clifford said.

"Counties to the south have been dealing with this for years now," he said. "They have been getting money and projects out of developers for years now. Hernando is just beginning to see that."

That does not mean developers will be willing to pay the prices the county demands, said Manuel, whose company is representing the developers of four subdivisions planned on 4,800 acres designated for future growth near I-75 and SR 50.

County planners expect 12,000 residential units to eventually be built in this zone. Along with 1,750 homes and three golf courses in the proposed Hickory Hill development nearby, $782-million in long-term transportation improvements will be required, the county says. That includes the widening of Old Trilby Road, now a quiet rural lane, into a four-lane highway that would cross over I-75 and provide a connection to the interstate at the SR 50 interchange.

Manuel and other development representatives have argued that some of these improvements are not necessary. They also say the work could be done for far less money if the county allowed developers to build the collector roads.

The state recently released estimates that building and buying right of way for a two-lane highway costs $13.4-million per mile. A more accurate figure, based on recent local projects, is $5-million, Dix said. Developers put this cost at $1-million or less.

"There is an efficiency in letting the private sector build roads," Manuel said. "We think there are savings to be had."

For example, he said, developers building on their own land don't have to pay for the land. Nor do they have to foot the bill for appraising the land or potentially defending those appraisals in court, as a government must do when it condemns private property to build a road.

But he also agrees with Dix on some other points. The stretch of SR 50 near I-75 is the most important part of the area's transportation network. Because this is a state road, its widening will have to conform to state procedures. Manuel and Dix also said it is likely to cost nearly as much as the state estimates to widen it from four to six lanes: $14-million per mile.

The county has scheduled a meeting to discuss the cost of improvements to serve the developments near I-75 and SR 50. That will give the county a firm idea on how much the developers are willing to contribute, Robinson said.

If the developers and county don't work out a plan to meet the needs, the consequences could be frightening, the commissioner said.

"I think the price of roads is going to continue to rise and to rise at a relatively rapid rate," she said. "It is not going to get any better. It's going to get worse."

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or (352) 754-6116.

[Last modified June 25, 2006, 04:29:10]