Split road
Two huge road projects are proposed in eastern Hillsborough to alleviate bay area traffic, but opponents who say that’s not what’s needed are getting louder.
By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER and JANET ZINK
Published July 28, 2006
TAMPA — The Tampa Bay area’s growth in the next 50 years will hinge largely on whether two mammoth toll road projects get built east of the region’s populated areas.
Supporters say the projects will save the area from worsening gridlock that threatens the region’s economic viability.Yet as more details emerge, more officials and residents say the toll roads simply will spur more congestion in what are now rural areas. And many key supporters would stand to benefit from that growth.
“This opens up those areas to political pressure for development,” said Bob Hunter, executive director of Hillsborough County’s planning commission. “We need to be careful before we go any further and ask: Is this what Tampa Bay wants?”
Tampa City Council member John Dingfelder said he was disappointed by plans for the new roads.
“By building roads out there in the hinterlands, all we’re doing is encouraging urban sprawl,” he said.
Who will decide what Tampa Bay needs?
Like other fast-growing metropolitan areas, the region lacks a political body of officials responsible for financing and managing a transportation system that crosses county boundaries.
So, in the coming months, as the toll projects get vetted publicly for the first time, an economic development group will try to fill the void. The Tampa Bay Partnership proposes an eight-county transportation authority with the power to coordinate and finance a regional system.
“We’re watching everyone’s lives grow dimmer because traffic is becoming so bad,” said Joe Smith, who is leading the Partnership’s effort to form an authority. “So we feel, 'Why can’t we have the best model?’”
While business and political leaders across Tampa Bay agree a regional authority is needed, they differ on what its composition and mission should be. Much of that split is along urban and suburban lines.
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After months of rumors, the Tampa-Hillsborough County Expressway Authority confirmed Thursday that it was planning to build a sprawling beltway around the Tampa Bay area.
The toll road would extend from northern Manatee through eastern Hillsborough, west across southern Pasco and into Pinellas. Authority officials hope to start construction by 2010, with the first segments open to traffic in 2015.
The Florida Department of Transportation is planning a separate 1,000-foot wide corridor that will include toll roads and space for mass transit and utilities. This facility would stretch from Charlotte County north to Hernando County.
No cost estimate is available, and DOT officials say they don’t know when they would begin construction.
DOT and the Expressway Authority officials say the roads are the best approaches to ease clogged roads.
But specifics have not been widely shared. Ali Atefi, a traffic engineer with Pasco’s Metropolitan Planning
Organization, said he hasn’t seen extensive details about either project.
“These projects need to go through a lot of public discussion,” Atefi said.
Hunter said he learned most of what he knows about the Expressway project from newspapers. He’s concerned that its route overlaps the eastern boundary of Hillsborough’s so-called “urban service area.”
Counties support growth within urban service areas while trying to preserve the rural nature of land outside those boundaries.
But developers and builders have complained for months that available land is scarce inside the service area. They want the boundary pushed east.
Building a road along the east boundary and a second road farther east would bring extraordinary pressures to develop land in between, Hunter said.
What’s more, building those roads would drain resources needed to improve Tampa Bay’s lackluster transit system, said Pierre Mathurin, a director for the nonprofit Hillsborough Advocates for Improved Transit.
“Everyone says they want transit, but we’re not doing the things needed to make transit possible,” Mathurin said.
The roads have gained early support from members of the Tampa Bay Partnership, many of whom are developers, land use attorneys, home builders and engineering firms that would profit from more suburban growth.
DOT officials said they approved a $750,000 study on the corridor after prompting from the Partnership.
The Partnership has scheduled an Aug. 28 summit for discussion of both projects and a possible regional transportation authority.
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The Tampa Bay Partnership’s vision extends beyond toll roads.In the last legislative session, Rep. Bill Galvano, R-Bradenton, sponsored a bill to create an authority with financing power.
Crafted with the help of the Partnership, that bill proposed a membership comprising representatives from eight counties: Hillsborough and Pinellas — which have relatively dense urban populations — and Citrus, Hernando, Manatee, Pasco, Polk, and Sarasota — which have more suburban and rural populations.
Outgoing Florida Sen. Jim Sebesta, who for six years chaired the Senate transportation committee, proposed a competing bill that would have created an authority weighted with transportation interests from urban areas.
Both proposals, introduced in the last weeks of the session, failed.
“I had grave concerns about (the Partnership’s) plans last session,” Sebesta said.
“There seemed to be a great emphasis on roads, where transit is such a tremendously important subject for the metropolitan areas.”
Smith, who leads Partnership’s push for a regional authority, said Sebesta’s plan had “no merit.” He said the Partnership promotes transit, but unlike the Sebesta plan, it offered a way to pay for it.
Misgivings about the roads and the Partnership’s plan for an authority come from people who say more emphasis should be on mass transit.
Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio said she supports the idea of a regional transportation authority but said its focus should be on the densely populated Tampa Bay area.
“If you cast too wide a net with counties that have such different needs, it would be hard to come to consensus,” she said.
In particular, she worries that the road building needs in suburban areas would steer money away from commuter rail in Pinellas, Pasco and Hillsborough counties.
“If you keep putting money into roads, you’re not going to have the money for mass transit,” she said.
“When you are a community that is growing by the numbers we are in a state getting 240,000 new residents a year, you owe it to future generations to put in a better transit system.”
Rep. Mike Fasano, who represents suburban areas in Citrus, Hernando, Pasco and Pinellas counties, sees it differently.
“I’m all for looking at it, but right now, every household that I know of owns a car,” he said. “I don’t want to use billions of dollars to create white elephants that aren’t used.”
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