Plaudits to the Tampa Tribune for staying on the public-records-request case and unearthing the report that the Florida Department of Transportation sent to the Federal Railroad Administration a few months back regarding the high-speed rail project that is no more. Illuminating.
And, as a result, even more infuriating.
In short, FLORIDA’s DOT–not to be confused with an evergreen, liberal think tank or a Washington bureaucracy run economically amok–projected an annual ridership of 5 million and a surplus of about $30 million to $45 million within a decade of start-up. And not that it would have had to climb out of a red-ink sinkhole at the get-go. The DOT estimated 3 million passengers and a $4.3 million surplus the first (2016) year. These Tampa-to-Orlando numbers were based on the finding of two consulting firms hired by the STATE of FLORIDA.
Would that this were a game-changing update instead of a maddening postscript, but the unveiling does underscore what was done last year in the name of keeping Sunshine State taxpayers from being “on the hook,” to repeat Gov. Rick Scott’s mantra. It’s also a reminder that just because the good names of fiscal responsibility and budget accountability are invoked, good things do not necessarily result. Especially if your priority constituency consists of Tea Partiers, the right-wing Reason Foundation and anyone from The Villages who thinks Barack Obama is a socialist. All the while, ironically, when thousands of jobs are on the line in the Great Recession that bludgeoned Florida.
Predictably enough, the governor’s office blew off the DOT report as inconsequential and then referenced the cost-overrunning, politically eclectic California experience as vindication. As if the subplots of California were comparable to the shovel-ready corridor connecting the budding Tampa-Orlando megalopolis.
And even if capital-cost overruns and possible subsidies, indeed, looked plausible last year, what was the harm in seeing how such scenarios would be addressed by the bidding international consortiums? Apparently there was harm in truth. As many as eight–all the major global players–were preparing bids. The winner would have realized a marketing coup: the one that built America’s first dedicated high-speed rail line. Any chance the winner would have agreed to make up ostensible deficits and overruns to get this contract? You think?
Not only was this DOT report a confirmation of what non-Reason Foundation and non-NoTaxForTracks observers thought of the Florida High-Speed Rail proposal, it’s a reminder of the failed vision that will haunt Florida long after Scott is voted out in 2014. The $2.4 billion from the Feds would have underwritten construction and engineering jobs in the short term, to be sure, but it would have advanced the development and re-development of the critically important Tampa-Orlando axis of synergy. Critical to Florida and critical to Tampa Bay–if you care about the future and an alternative to overburdened Interstate 4. But that would have taken a big-picture mentality and allegiance to something other than Tea Party acolytes.
But, hey, there’s always SunRail. But that’s another (political) story.