Thoughts on the Broward County Transit Summit

My comments today on last week's Broward County Transit Summit -held at the Broward Convention Center at Port Everglades- follow the great spot-on analysis by the Herald's Larry Lebowitz in Monday's paper, and the one in the Sun-Sentinel -a very cursory review with numerical mistakes- by Michael Turnbell and Scott Wyman.
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http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami_dade/story/279741.html
Miami Herald
Broward transit stuck in low gear
October 22, 2007
by Larry Lebowitz

The scene must have seemed all too familiar to the 200 transportation professionals, elected officials and civic leaders who gathered with a smattering of regular folks last week at the Broward County Convention Center.
They assembled for the latest ''summit'' to ponder Broward's mass transit future -- or, more accurately, the lack thereof -- for a community of 1.7 million residents today and another 700,000 expected by 2030.
Outgoing county Mayor Josephus Eggelletion, who campaigned against last year's penny sales tax for transportation, asked the assembly to break into small brainstorming groups.
They yielded many substantive, if all too predictable, short- and long-term solutions. Many mirrored the big wish list from the sales-tax campaign that only garnered 38 percent of the vote last fall:
• Develop passenger service on the Florida East Coast rail corridor.
• Buy more buses -- and run them more frequently -- to attract more riders.
• Improve service on the east-west corridors that feed into the burgeoning north-south corridors on U.S. 441, U.S. 1 and State Road A1A.
• Synchronize traffic signals (which really will help single-occupant vehicles more than transit, but we'll let that slide because, frankly, they're right).
Plenty of common sense was flowing in the room. Several tables wanted to link countywide or regional land-use plans with future transit needs. Others wanted to make it easier for municipalities to widen sidewalks and erect bus shelters to reward current transit customers and attract new ones.
But ultimately what they were really clamoring for were two vital things: leadership and money.

LEADER NEEDED

Public transportation in Broward, they said, needs a champion, a political leader willing to look beyond the boundaries of his own district and with a vision that extends far beyond the next two- to four-year election cycle.
If that champion actually exists, he or she needs to build a consensus across a thicket of diverse economic, civic, age, ethnic and municipal boundaries, making a case for the community to tax itself -- and in the process, qualify for billions of matching federal and state dollars needed to build and run a transit system.
''It was déjà vu all over again,'' Jim Cummings, the Fort Lauderdale construction magnate who led the unsuccessful sales-tax campaign, said after last week's summit. ``Everybody pretty much said the same thing: We need leadership. I hope that commissioners realize all these people were talking about them.''
Broward's population is larger than many major U.S. urban areas. Its roads are already at or beyond capacity and there is very little vacant land remaining between the ocean and the Everglades. The inevitable result: more motorists on virtually the same roads.
And for a county of its size, Broward is running a relatively tiny bus operation.


Consider that Broward County Transit serves a community with roughly 100,000 more residents than Tri-Met, the three-county authority that serves greater Portland, Ore., and 100,000 fewer than the King County Metro serving greater Seattle.
Broward County Transit: 240 buses, zero trains, 900 employees.
Tri-Met: 623 buses, 87 trains -- and rapidly expanding, 2,650 employees.
King County Metro: 1,335 buses and trolleys, 4,300 employees.

Sure, they're vastly different places. Portland and Seattle came of age before World War II -- when downtowns were the economic, cultural and commercial hubs of their regions.
Broward, by comparison, is the epitome of the post-WWII car-centric uber-suburb still searching for its own identity. Jobs, shopping, entertainment and cultural centers are scattered across the landscape from Deerfield Beach to Hallandale Beach in the east and from Coral Springs to Miramar out west.


BUILD CONSENSUS

Broward County Transit Director Chris Walton is hoping that last week's summit will spawn dozens of continuing community conversations over the next 18 months, building consensus from the ground up, for a concrete list of projects that a sales tax would pay for. The next forum is set for Nov. 13 in Pembroke Pines.
''Without a dedicated funding source, we're not going anywhere,'' Walton said.
Don't look to the incoming mayor, Commissioner Lois Wexler, to champion a transit tax. Wexler made it very clear: She isn't going to accept, much less campaign for, a plan that doesn't have complete community buy-in.
Even if it does get to the ballot, it probably won't be approved, given the current climate. Some high-growth Sun Belt communities need three or four tries before congestion gets so bad that wary voters are finally willing to tax themselves.
Homeowners clamoring for property-tax and insurance relief probably aren't in the mood to further tax themselves.
And while the region is getting younger, a large segment of Broward politics is still dominated by the elderly and condo associations. How do you convince seniors who came here for sun, fun and cheap living in their fixed-income golden years to vote for a tax that probably won't bear much real fruit while they're still around?
Which means there may be more ''déjà vu all over again'' transportation summits in Broward's future.
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South Florida Sun-Sentinel
SUMMIT GATHERS MASS TRANSIT IDEAS
October 17, 2007
by Michael Turnbell and Scott Wyman


Fort Lauderdale
What should be done to improve mass transit in Broward County? About 100 elected officials, planners, consultants and residents asked themselves that question Tuesday at Broward's first transit summit.
Buses and trains need to run more often. They need to be safe and reliable. And they need to go where people live and work.
Mass transit plans must be forward-thinking but reflect what residents and users want, not political agendas.
"It ought to be about what the community wants to achieve," said County Mayor Josephus Eggelletion. "People are smart enough to tell us what they want."
With a population of about 1.8 million, Broward's mass transit system lags behind comparable metro areas. Broward County Transit has 240 buses vs. Seattle's King County Metro, which has more than 1,300 buses. Dallas has 604 buses and 103 rail cars. Portland, Ore., has 623 buses and 87 rail cars. Miami-Dade County has a fleet of 751 buses and 104 rail cars.
What do the other metro areas have that Broward doesn't? A dedicated source of money such as a sales tax that pays for operations, said William Millar, executive director of the American Public Transportation Association.
Without it, Broward's system has little chance of growing or attracting new riders.
"You can have the best plan in the world, but if the money isn't there to implement it, it will be all for naught," Millar said.
County officials said future transit summit meetings will be in the evening when more people can attend. The next summit is planned for Nov. 13 in Pembroke Pines. Another will be held Jan. 24 in Fort Lauderdale.
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I wanted to let you know that I'm in the process of finishing a letter to incoming Broward County lower-case mayor Lois Wexler.

Wexler kindly referred to me at last week's Broward County Transit Summit as the 'gentleman in the back' -I've been called worse!- in the beginning of her closing comments, after I'd earlier taken the microphone to speak for my table of seven participants, and publicly noted for all the attendees that one of the biggest longstanding problems with the County is their lack of accountability with the public.

That's perhaps best personified by the fact that, despite my being a person who's serious about public affairs, I didn't find out about the summit until the previous Saturday's Herald, in a story with no byline on page 3 of the Broward/Local section. (See below)

Frankly, I could've zipped right past it if I wasn't quite so attentive, and been none the wiser.
And no thanks to the Sun-Sentinel for not even bothering to write about it until the day before the event, albeit on the front page, above the fold.
Honestly, who needs to sabotage an event's turnout when the people throwing it do such a good job of that themself?

Frankly, because of my own past and wide-array of media friends around the country, print and electronic, I've never been a big fan of 'killing the messenger,' yet the 'awareness' problem I cited was never adequately addressed by either Comm. Wexler or Comm. Eggelletion, the hosts as it were.

The letter I'm writing will be much more critical and more specific than the handful of things of things that I mentiuoned in my email to Commissioner Gunzburger last week, which I sent to you as a bcc on the chance that you attended the summit.

I also hope to have some illuminating photos of the examples I cite, since they're self-evident to even the state/county/muncipalities most ardent transit defenders.

As you'd expect, given what I wrote last week, the examples cited are mostly in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach, but I've seen identical examples in downtown FTL & Miami, on Biscayne Blvd and on Miami Beach, it's just that they're more personally galling to me since I see them all the time because of where I live and recreate.

Believe me when I tell you, I have a specific example of intergovernmental inertia & incompetency that will have all the folks in South Florida who care about transit and transportation scratching their heads, since it will hold a mirror up to a situation that the county and its army of apologists has allowed to exist for years, and for which no good excuses exist.

As it happens, I spoke to dozens of people at the summit last week about this particular topic, and got the same dazed look/shoulder shrug that's become endemic in public circles down here for the past 30 years when the public finds out -again- about how abysmally low the level of personal and professional accountability is here

It's roughly on the same level of counter-intuitive brainpower that caused FIU to say no to having the Metrorail come towards campus last year.

Since last Tuesday, I double-checked some of last year's posts at CriticalMiami to be sure the devastating article Larry Lebowitz wrote about the FIU debacle matched my recollection of it, and I was pleased that their posts confirmed it.

Once I've got the letter to Wexler and her colleagues finished -with lots of cc's & bcc's to other very interested parties in South Florida & Tallahasse- I'll be posting it to my blog so that others can publicly ponder what the real level of desire is to solve genuine transit problems, and what's so embarrassing because of it's longstanding nature, that some would prefer to imagine that it doesn't exist
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Miami Herald
FORT LAUDERDALE: Public invited to county's transit summit
October 13, 2007

Finding ways to alleviate Broward County's traffic congestion will be the topic of a transit summit on Tuesday. The summit will be from 1 to 4:30 p.m. at the Broward County Convention Center, 1950 Eisenhower Blvd., Fort Lauderdale. Parking is free and public participation is encouraged.

"This is the first in a series of public meetings that will take place countywide over the next two years," Broward County Mayor Josephus Eggelletion Jr. said in a press release. "We will engage local, regional and state officials, business and community leaders, residents and transit riders in a discussion that will eventually lead to a master public transportation plan."

William Millar, president of the American Public Transportation Association, will be the keynote speaker, providing a national perspective on public transportation.

Presentations will include information from the Metropolitan Planning Organization, the Florida Department of Transportation, Broward County Transit, Miami-Dade Transit, Palm Tran, South Florida Regional Transit Authority (Tri-Rail), and the Regional Planning Councils. Roundtable discussions will provide a forum for attendees to voice their concerns, ideas and recommendations.

On Tuesday, the County Commission will not meet for its regular session and will conduct a joint workshop with the Metropolitan Planning Organization about transportation issues at 10 a.m. at the Convention Center.
For more information, call 954-357-8355.
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http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-flbsummit1015nboct15,0,6102052.story
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward asks public for suggestions on fixing mass transit
By Michael Turnbell
October 15, 2007

What do you think of mass transit in Broward County? What would you do to fix it? And are you willing to pay for it?

Billions could be spent putting commuter trains on the Florida East Coast Railway through the county's coastal downtowns, building an east-west light rail connecting the western suburbs to downtown Fort Lauderdale and the airport, and creating a countywide network of rapid transit bus routes with limited stops.

The reality is that none of it will get built without a consensus or huge financial commitment from county taxpayers.

With those questions in mind, Broward County officials are hosting a transit summit Tuesday to address what should be done.

The summit will be the first in a series of countywide meetings over the next two years with residents, business leaders, elected officials and transit riders to come up with a master public transportation plan.

While mass transit will be the focus, County Mayor Josephus Eggelletion said the summit will be open to any suggestion about improving the way commuters get around the county, such as synchronizing traffic signals. The meetings also would be used to educate residents on the complexities of transportation funding and just how bad congestion will get if nothing is done.

"We, as elected officials, might have our own ideas about what should be in the plan but unless the general public buys into it, it won't happen," Eggelletion said.

The county's timing is crucial. In 2009, Congress will begin reauthorizing the next six-year transportation spending bill.

The federal government currently pays up to 50 percent of the construction cost for new mass transit projects. But even to get in line for money, state and local governments must have a dedicated funding source in place to pay for the other half as well as cover operating costs. Local governments also must demonstrate to federal officials that a project will attract enough riders to justify the expense of building it.

Broward already has a long-range transportation plan that prioritizes projects to be built over the next 20 years. The plan, which is updated every three years, is approved by the Metropolitan Planning Organization, a 19-member voting body that includes county commissioners, city representatives and the Broward School Board.

The group meets monthly, but few from the public attend.

Some mass transit projects have struggled to win acceptance from the community.

In November 2004, the organization approved the route for a proposed east-west light rail that would send trains along Northwest 136th Avenue, Interstate 595, State Road 7, Broward Boulevard, Andrews Avenue and U.S. 1.

But Eggelletion, who is a member of the planning group, has been sharply critical of the idea. He said residents along the route don't want it, either.

State officials already have shifted the western leg of the line to run through a business park instead of along 136th Avenue, because of residents' opposition.

In November 2006, Broward County voters overwhelmingly rejected increasing the sales tax from 6 to 7 percent to improve mass transit.

Voters didn't buy into the transportation tax after county commissioners said they wouldn't be bound to honor the list of transit projects they endorsed several weeks before the election.

Key business groups lobbied heavily for the sales tax increase. But the campaign lacked widespread public support from residents and neighborhood groups.

Eggelletion said many people in his central Broward district, whom he described as the most likely in the county to use mass transit, didn't know the issue was on the ballot.

"That's where the past initiative failed," Eggelletion said. "It was really well-intended, but it failed to get people involved. It has to be more than just the business community."

Michael Turnbell can be reached at mturnbell@sun-sentinel.com, 954-356-4155or 561-243-6155.