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Pinellas gas tax goes up a penny

Early edition: Officials say drivers will save long-term, as revenue will pay for traffic control devices.

By Will Van Sant
Published January 2, 2007

If you buy gas in Pinellas, be ready to part with an extra penny every time you pump a gallon into your tank this year.

A penny gas levy approved by the Pinellas County Commission in March took effect Monday.

The tax is expected to generate $3.9-million annually. That money, along with state and federal grants, will pay for a 20-year plan to outfit county roads with the latest in traffic control technology.

Key to the system is a network of “smart” traffic signals that can adapt to vehicle flow in real time. Currently, the timing patterns of county traffic signals are limited to a preset library of options.

County officials said making signals responsive to traffic flow will reduce congestion, benefit the environment and save drivers money by curbing fuel consumption.

“The nice thing about this new adaptive system is that it really allows us to provide optimal timing,” said Pete Yauch , the county’s transportation director. “The system that we have got is basically 20-year-old technology.”

Other components of the new system include cameras that will monitor intersections for tieups and electronic message signs to notify drivers about delays and direct them toward unclogged routes.

Work will be done in three phases. When the first phase is completed in 2009, the technology should be easing traffic along U.S. 19, Belcher Road, McMullen-Booth Road, Ulmerton Road, and Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard, as well as connecting roads.

With the penny hike, Pinellas drivers will be paying a tax of 46.9  cents on every gallon of gas they purchase, the same amount drivers in Hillsborough and Pasco counties pay. That figure includes money collected by the federal government, the state and the county.

The county’s local option portion of that amount will rise to 7 cents per gallon. The county last raised its portion of the gas tax in 1992, when it went from 4 to 6 cents a gallon.

Using data from AAA, the county estimated that the new tax will cost the typical Pinellas driver $6.50 a year. Officials said that extra cost, however, will be easily offset by reductions in fuel consumption.

Recent testing of the technology on a stretch of U.S. 19 reduced average travel times by 7.5 percent; testing on a stretch of Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard cut average travel times by 8 percent.

The testing also uncovered areas that need to be improved. For instance, Yauch said, the technology was great at getting traffic to flow, but drivers seeking access to main roads from side streets were experiencing longer delays.

The need to work out bugs in the system is one reason that St. Petersburg, unlike the rest of the county, has not yet agreed to use the adaptive traffic signal technology that is the project’s marquee element.

The city will, however, take advantage of the message signs and camera monitoring of intersections that the penny will pay for.

Mike Connors, the city’s internal services director, said St. Petersburg’s grid of broad arteries means less congestion than in other parts of the county and that the city would wait to see how the adaptive traffic signalization works elsewhere before deciding whether to adopt the technology.

“Here in St. Pete,” Connors said, “our position is if it’s not broken, what are we trying to fix?”

The penny tax will expire Dec. 31, 2026.

Will Van Sant can be reached at (727) 445-4166 or vansant@sptimes.com.

[Last modified January 2, 2007, 20:29:42]