I live and work in the Space Coast, and I occasionally travel through Orlando on the way to Tampa about once every 4 to 5 weeks for fun, but I cannot imagine ever wanting to take the train. I just don’t know how I would get around in Tampa without my car once I got there. I can make it to Tampa in a little over 2 hrs by car, so the train would have to be significantly faster to make up for me being without my car. I guess I think most people would also be like me (maybe that is not a valid assumption??), and ridership will be low and cost taxpayers a bunch for not much benefit.
I also heard a plan for a passenger train utilizing existing freight tracks pretty much following I-95 from Jacksonville to Miami. The proposed schedule had a 6 hour train ride from my house to Miami (I can make it there in 3 hrs by car and not have to wait on or pay for taxis once I’m there.)
Hopefully, I am wrong and the rails are a huge success, considering it looks like I will be paying for them either way… Hopefully they will be such a success that they will improve other transportation options, but I remain doubtful and wishing I had my money back.
Take a look at the proposed time savings. From downtown Tampa to Orlando International Airport the savings is only 18 minutes after the three stops are added. Lets assume you are 5 minutes from the Tampa station and you only have to wait 10 minutes for a train. You are down to 3 minute savings. At the other end you are at Orlando Airport, which is a pretty silly place to be unless you catching a plane in which case you should have gone to Tampa Airport. If you are going somewhere else, you’ve blown your 3 minutes before you get to the taxi stand.
And yes I expect the Republicans to take over the House and to cut funding for HSR. They will want to fund their boondoggles and not the Democratic boondoggles. It has nothing to do with ideology, it is about the money.
In any case I don’t think HSR is needed in this country. Air travel works well enough in the US or at least it would work if we put the TSA on a leash. If anything the proposed HSR is more vulnerable to terrorist action than our current air traffic system.
The TSA is simultaneously too strict and not strict enough. They’ll confiscate water bottles, but let people on board with laptops. Even with the TSA, there’s no way to stop someone who just wanted to destroy a plane, and even without them, there’d be no way anyone could hijack one.
Well, you could destroy a train, or you could take it over and hold the passengers as hostages; but you can’t hijack a train. It goes where the tracks go and nowhere else.
Re-read the OP – the point of this referendum is to fund mass transit in Tampa. Including light rail, but also greatly improved bus service. If it gets done, you could get around in Tampa without a car.
It’s not just a time saver – from the Space Coast, you could drive (or take a bus!) to the Orlando Airport, where the HSR station nearest to you would be*; then ride to and around Tampa, without bothering to drive yourself, without putting any mileage on your car, and without adding nearly as much CO2 to the atmosphere. That’s worth something, isn’t it?
*That’s for the first Tampa-Orlando leg. For the second Orlando-to-Miami phase, Florida High Speed Rail is looking at two possible alignments, one of which would go by way of the Space Coast, and follow the I-95 corridor down to Miami. (The other would follow the route of Florida’s Turnpike.)
BTW, and apropos of something, one developer is looking to build the Tampa Bay Rays a new baseball stadium in downtown Tampa, at a site right next to the Ice Palace and the Florida Aquarium. And there’s even what appears to be a grassroots organization for that purpose (grassroots or astroturf, I couldn’t say). The St. Petersburgers don’t like that one little bit, of course; the Rays’ current ballpark, Tropicana Field (a stadium with a very troubled history) is in St. Pete. But if the referendum passes and HSR is not derailed, that can only strengthen the downtown-Tampa bid, as the proposed site is right next to a streetcar stop, and within walking distance of the proposed central multimodal (HSR/light-rail/streetcar/bus) station, covering 5 blocks running along the south edge of I-4, from Tampa Street to Jefferson Street – see drawing in thisCreative Loafing article on the past and future of Franklin Street. Oh, and that’s another thing, when the one existing streetcar line is completed, it is supposed to run up Franklin as far as Palm Avenue (see p. 3 of this pdf), and east on Palm to Ybor. The extension to Franklin & Whiting is being built now, opens in December. I don’t know if all of that will get done, but if the referendum passes, etc., I’m sure they’ll at least run it up Franklin to the HSR station by the time the latter opens. Which can only help business on Franklin Street.
All of this including the stadium is at least 5-10 years in the future, of course, and might never happen.
As far as HSR is concerned, I’m more worried about acid than bombs. A bomb can take out one train. A bottle of acid will shut down the whole system while the track is being inspected. When you are talking about a train moving at 150MPH, you don’t need a bomb.
I worry about transportation infrastructure. From my point of view the security theater of the TSA is doing more damage to us than the terrorists did. As far a I’m concerned, that should have quit after they hardened the cockpit doors and told the flight crew to not open the door even if the terrorists start executing passengers. We have an interest in preventing our planes from being converted into missiles, but I don’t see why air passengers are any more valuable than the other 300 million people in our country are. If the Times Square bomber had been a little smarter or better trained he could have ended up killing a lot more people than an airplane bombing.
My point is, that HSR creates a target thousands of miles long and practically impossible to defend. With air travel, the planes are vulnerable, but the terrorists can’t blow up the sky.
That pretty much sums up the problem of high speed rail in North America – inadequate public transportation at the destinations. HSR is only one part of a transportation system, so if the other parts are not up to snuff, people will avoid HSR not because of HSR in and of itself, but because some other part of the system does not meet their needs.
Well, that’s what the Hillsborough County referendum under discussion is about – gettiing some adequate public transportation at least at this particular destination.
My guess is that they will run shuttle buses from the Sand Lake Road Station to the airport. It would only take about 10 minutes from the station to the A side terminal.
Nor will Tampa’s Amtrak terminal, Union Station. Not making Union Station the HSR stop has been a controversial decision – if we already have a train station, why not use it for everything? (Especially as it is a picturesque historic station, which was long abandoned, and which local civic groups made great and successful efforts in the 1990s to have restored and reopened.) But, the planned intermodal station is still downtown and is only a few blocks from Union Station.
BTW: Right between Union Station and the intermodal station, just a block or two from each, and filling a gap between Downtown and Ybor City, Encore now is being built – a huge mixed-income, mixed-use, residential-retail-office urban-infill development, very New Urbanist. It is being built on the site of the old Central Avenue district, which once was the heart of African-American culture and commerce in Tampa – mostly destroyed in race rioting in 1967; the remainder demolished in urban renewal in 1974; later replaced by Central Park Village, typical project-housing apartments; which recently were demolished to make way for Encore. Check out the site plan and virtual fly-thru. It’ll really be beautiful (at least by downtown-Tampa standards).
And, no, I don’t know what happened to the residents of Central Park Village; but at any rate, this ain’t your standard fuck-the-poor gentrification project. It will provide some low-income units, some retirement apartments – and, for residents of the area generally, something sorely lacking that every neighborhood needs: A supermarket.
I guess that’s because they decided on only three HSR stops in the Orlando area – the airport, Convention Center, and Disney – for facilitation-of-tourism purposes; and SunRail is using the existing CSX tracks, and those tracks don’t go to the airport, Convention Center, or Disney. Bad planning from decades ago, whaddaya gonna do.
Well. Go here click on “August/Sept. 2010 Presentation,” and you’ll get a pdf PowerPoint presentation – go to p. 25, “ORLANDO RAIL ROUTES,” and you’ll see an Orlando-area map showing the HRS, SunRail, and (I did not know about this) a planned east-west light-rail line, which would connect to the airport and the HSR stop there, and which also would connect to SunRail at Sand Lake Road. Not perfect intermodality, but much better than none.
To answer the OP, I would vote in favor of the referendum. Another penny of sales tax would be worth it to me to have light rail. Even in this severe recession, gas prices aren’t going much below $2.50 and will only go higher in the future. Auto insurance is $100/mo. or more. If we attached a monetary cost to the congestion, air pollution, sprawl, death/injury/ongoing medical costs, and the other costs mentioned in the quote, what would be the true cost of driving? People that can’t afford to own and operate cars need transportation options, as well as the elderly and others who can’t drive. Tampa is the only city of its size without light rail, a factor that discourages businesses from locating there. It will tie in with the HSR to Orlando and beyond. Building and expanding more roadways is not a good solution to continued growth.
N.B.: 25% of the penny-tax revenue is to go for road repairs, improvements and upgrades. My understanding, however, is that this (mostly) does not mean building more roads, but improving existing ones. See here for a list.
Thanks to some rather blatant malfeasance on the part of the Orlando Expressway Authority board, SunRail is looking less and less likely. People just aren’t in the mood to approve of government projects, even at the local level.
I suppose you could plant bombs on the tracks . . . But you seem to be saying our air-travel-security system is too strict as it is.