However these Parsons Brinckeroff transportation meetings shake out, this much is evident: The Tampa area will not find itself where it needs to be. And that would be perched to finally add the missing arrow to the quiver of assets needed to successfully sustain competition with other pro-active, major urban markets: modern mass transit.
At best, we’re headed for a road-skewed plan that does too little for progressive lifestyle and the sort of millennial-business recruiting that leads to an ever-higher profile and ever-burgeoning tax base.
Too bad those efforts to interest the Legislature in city-only referenda never went anywhere. Mayor Bob Buckhorn and peers from St. Petersburg, Orlando, Miami and Jacksonville did their lobbying best a couple of years ago, but there were no takers for municipal self-determination. As we know, recent transportation initiatives were shot down in Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties, although they passed in the hub cities of Tampa and St. Pete.