Elected officials in charge of the region's transportation future stand at an important  crossroads tonight.

They will hold a public hearing on updating the long-range transportation plan and will hear  some people say the plan is too ambitious and should be dropped in favor of one that relies only on  roads. The board should resist this criticism because it is shortsighted and ill-informed.
[HOTPOLITICS: No, "Physician heal thyself..." the Tampa Tribune's "fevered" rail-rhetoric un-professional and woefully ill-informed.]

The Metropolitan Planning Organization must remember how it got to this point. The plan update  is the result of many hours of public meetings, open discussions, public comments, compromises and  sharp-penciled estimates of how much various strategies could cost. Not enough money is available  to widen every road that is overloaded with traffic, so highway improvements must be supplemented  with less costly alternatives, including better bus service and, at some point, light-duty trains.
[HOTPOLITICS: A study of Portland area rail transit by noted Taubman Center research "Fellow" refutes the rail rhetoric of the Tampa Tribune's Editorial Board "transit experts."]

State and federal law requires this sort of realistic[?] planning; in fact, about half of the  federal money that goes to local transportation improvements is restricted to investments other  than roads.

One reason for that is the cost of expanding highways in built-up areas. Improving the  interstate highways through Tampa will cost $ 100 million to $ 300 million a mile and could destroy  3,000 homes and 500 businesses.

The MPO has been cautious and totally open as it tries to find ways for the community to grow  without causing gridlock. It has decided to phase in improvements as they are needed and can be  financed. If planning goes as the board foresees, in 2000 a referendum will be held on financing a  highway, bus and rail plan now under detailed study.

Some people who are opposed to rail don't want to give the people this choice. It is the same  sort of opposition that had to be overcome to build the airport, the east-west expressway, the  university and the stadium, and it will be overcome again if the process remains open and  clear-headed.
[HOTPOLITICS: Once again, in an unseemly and  highly unprofessional ad-hominem attack, the Tampa Tribune attempts to trivialize, marginalize and denigrate honest and informed Taxpayer opposition to an economically distastrous and  historically failed light-rail mass transit paradigm.]

"No large city can function without good transit," the Charlotte Observer said in a recent  editorial. That growing North Carolina city, much like Tampa in many ways, held a referendum last  week on a proposed highway, bus and train system. The people countywide were asked if they wanted  to raise the local sales tax by one-half cent to add buses and, if studies confirm the need, a  commuter train. Fifty-eight percent of the residents voted yes to the tax that is expected to raise  $ 1 million a week for 25 years.

Transit critics say that with the per-capita ridership of trains and buses in decline, it is  foolish to spend more money to add or expand routes. They don't point out that the total number of  riders is increasing nationwide, but the percentage of riders is falling because transit growth has  not kept pace with the population, nor has it been used in many areas to allow the development of  new communities that are less car-dependent. An increasing number of people have no choice but to  drive.
[HOTPOLITICS: The preceding paragraph fails totally in its logic by repeating half-truths and rail/transit myths.]

What a substantial majority of the public knows, and what the anti-rail minority in this area  refuses to acknowledge, is that it is less expensive to support transit than to shortchange it. How  good an investment is transit? The experts at the respected Center for Urban Transportation  Research at the University of South Florida recently attempted to use scientific formulas to reduce  the question to a number.
[HOTPOLITICS: IBID]

Researchers determined that for every dollar the state and its cities and counties spend on  transit, citizens enjoy $ 2.39 worth of benefits. That's quite a return and helps explain why the  public, when asked, so often says yes to transit.
[HOTPOLITICS: More Tribune Rail-Rhetoric and deceptive half-truths.]

The Florida Transportation Association reminds us that other benefits, not included in the  research done by the USF think tank, include reduced air pollution. Air quality is an issue urban  areas can no longer ignore. A plan that calls for increasing the traffic load without offering a  mix of more efficient options will be rejected and risk loss of federal funds.
[HOTPOLITICS: More Tribune rail myths, half-truths and deception]

Lucilla Ayer, executive director of the MPO, says the plan update as written can pass federal  review and should also prove acceptable to the state Department of Community Affairs, charged with  enforcing good planning techniques to reduce costly sprawl.
[HOTPOLITICS: MPO executive director Lucilla Ayer, a skilled political operative and career transportation bureaucrat, brings vast professional experience from her earlier employment with FDOT in South Florida as an early-on functionary in that downward spiraling economic disaster known as Metro-Dade, MetroRail]

A highways-only approach would soon turn Tampa into another Los Angeles if it were allowed to  happen. Indications are that the public wouldn't stand for it. Already residents have voiced loud  complaints about certain road-widening plans, such as the proposal to six-lane Linebaugh Avenue.
[HOTPOLITICS: "Light rail advocates in Portland, Oregon and elsewhere often imply that if a city doesn't build light rail it will become another Los Angeles. One document produced by the Portland area's regional government, METRO, makes clear that these are not mutually exclusive futures."]
 

Although Tampa is behind many other cities its size in transportation planning, the new 2020  plan has the potential of allowing us to begin correcting old mistakes. We urge the MPO - Scott  Paine and Bob Buckhorn of the Tampa City Council, Ed Turanchik, Chris Hart and Joe Chillura of the  county commission, Tampa Mayor Dick Greco, Richard Glorioso of the Plant City Commission, Linda  Saul-Sena of HARTline, Temple Terrace Mayor Bob Woodard and Monroe Mack of the expressway authority  - to continue the process that will allow voters to help decide the region's transportation future,  upon which the area's social progress and economic growth so heavily depend.
[HOTPOLITICS: The facts are clear and readily available to anyone: Urban rail transit is and has been a national failure by any fair and  objective measure, the Tampa Tribune's bizarre rail-rhetoric notwithstanding]