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I’ve been involved on all sides of the train issue for some 20 years. In that time I’ve seen a drive towards getting one thing, and one thing only, built – Consultants bank accounts. Here in Florida we seem too apt to repeat the disaster of 100 years of Everglades cleanup. Millions and millions of dollars to people who claim to be working on solutions and the most that is produced is 100s of pages of “solutions” and very little work for the money.
This time it’s BILLIONS of tax payer dollars for something that the polls consistently show the people want but the people won’t ride. My argument, from the very first time I heard of this when I worked in government, was let the private sector pay for this. I learned early on that they won’t from their very employees, who stated they can’t build it because they know this can’t make money.
So the lowly taxpayers get stuck with a worthless project that will bleed them dry and probably will never see a train built.
What’s interesting about the “Orlando” to “Tampa” route Obama is touting is that so little work has been done for that proposed route. Most of the effort and money has been put into a trail that goes from western Volusia County to western Orange County. More reason to need to blow away more taxpayers dough!
I could go on. This is a financial disaster that will never meet its expectations. 1 million riders is a conservative estimate of ridership. Dade County’s MetroRail would love to see that number in 5 years. And they’re in a more congested area.
The cartoon is an amalgam of ideas from Ken Culotta, Sally Baptiste and Mark Duren.
