A $500 Million Debate

Published: May 13, 2007

A transportation task force, headed by Hillsborough Commissioner Ken Hagan, is recommending spending $500 million over the next five years for transportation improvements, with an emphasis on roads and intersections. Former county commissioner Ed Turanchik, in a widely circulated e-mail, strongly objects. Turanchik argues it would be wiser to save the bonding capacity for transit.

In a sharp response to Turanchik, task force member Bob Abberger, an executive with the Trammell Crow Co., says immediate improvements are essential. Their spirited exchange reflects the importance of this decision.

Ed Turanchik

Hillsborough County is on the verge of a half-billion-dollar mistake. The county's transportation task force is going to finish its recommendations this month on spending $500 million for an assortment of road and intersection improvements, with a minor portion going to transit, right-of-way acquisition and traffic management. This is a huge sum of money that will have a miniscule impact on alleviating traffic congestion or providing options to being stuck in cars.

The spending recommendations will widen roadways that go to major regional highways but will do nothing to improve or enhance regional capacity. At the same time, the Legislature has approved the first ever regional transportation authority that might actually be able to do something if it only had local funding sources for transit.

Since Hillsborough County has identified $500 million for transportation, the best thing to do is not waste it on incremental improvements that will get eaten up in a sea of congestion and growth. It should hold this capacity in reserve and apply it to a future regional rail/bus transit system.

If we had had the vision and fortitude to act in the 1990s on the transit initiative, it would be under construction today for a fraction of the cost that it will cost us and have a transit system to grow on. The stars are aligning again for the opportunity to move transit forward in a meaningful way. I hate to see us lose this opportunity again.

So the county will spend $500 million on roadways. The city will spend $40 million on downtown infrastructure improvements with CRA funds.

None of these projects add seriously to regional mobility. None deals seriously with issues such as growth management, workforce mobility, global warming or regional competitiveness.

With potential serious reductions in local government revenues on the horizon due to changes in Tallahassee, and with the various permutations for funding of transportation initiatives that might come out of a regional transportation authority wholly unknown and unknowable at this point, we should keep our powder dry. We can be pothole mavens or we can start the serious business of building a transportation infrastructure that will work for our citizens.

This is, in my view, the appropriate conservative approach. Wouldn't it be ironic if we missed the next federal funding cycle for lack of this $500 million and passed up on $1.5 billion? I would be exceedingly angry to know that my tax dollars, which I work very hard to earn, are being sent to another community to help them solve their problems, creating more livable cities where my children will prefer to live.

Bob Abberger

(In an email responding to Ed Turanchik:)

Your outcry is ill-considered. We have a $3.8 billion-plus unfunded roadway need alone in Hillsborough County, not including our transit needs. Our key commercial corridors are hurtling toward gridlock, with no plan in place today to provide even minimal improvements while a broader funding strategy is addressed.

Although you haven't participated in the task force's deliberations, I do have great respect for your opinions and research on transit, and share your belief that we must fund transit. As you know, I led the Chamber of Commerce's task force in 2000 when I served as vice chair of HART for new transit and roadway funding, and I shared your frustration that we lost our position on Federal New Starts as well as ignored our growing unfunded transportation needs with little or no acknowledgement by the media or community at large.

That being said, our task force set out to first address critical short-term needs that we can address in a five-year period. The $500 million in improvements identified will address significant projects that will improve flow and congestion across all parts of our county.

These are critical projects that current funding won't dent at about $50 million a year in current county roadway funding. The next step is to quickly move on this momentum to identify additional funding that can be used to accomplish the real challenges in our vastly under-funded transportation infrastructure - a step that needs to occur this year that will provide the leverage you and I desire with federal funding.

We as a community blew it on transit when we lost our position on New Starts. A rail solution is many, many years from being in place. Bus funding is desperately needed, and we are looking at funding the first bus rapid transit corridor to get this jump started as well.

Our short-term program contemplates bonding existing revenues, and, pursuant to the bond underwriting rules, funds must be fully expended within five years, be specifically programmed and used for capital projects only, not operational expenses. We need a different funding source for transit. We lost our position in the Federal New Starts program because we did not have a dedicated matching revenue source - future revenues for both operations and capital.

The contemplated program funds smart technology countywide to improve traffic flow and mitigate congestion, provides for extensive intersection improvements countywide and yes, it does provide some critical roadway capacity.

We can throw $500 million at transit, and we will still see our community grind to total gridlock with a virtual moratorium on new jobs as we find ourselves with no roadway capacity. Or, we can put our finger in the dike, provide critical short-term capacity while we find funding to fix the dam.