Florida Influencers Are Ignorant Idiots

More than 9.1 million people worked in Florida in 2016. Of those, 8 million of them drove to work. More than half a million worked at home. Only 187,000, just 2 percent, took transit to work. More Floridians walked or bicycled to work than took transit.

Yet a survey of 50 people who the Miami Herald dubs “the Influencers” — supposedly the state’s leading figures — found that 80 percent of them believe that increasing funding for transit should be the state’s top infrastructure priority. This only proves that these so-called influencers don’t know what they are talking about and shouldn’t be allowed to influence anything.

Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach has already spent $1.2 billion on a commuter-rail line that carries fewer than 7,000 commuters to work each day. Miami also spent well over a billion dollars on a so-called rapid-transit line whose revenues cover only 20 percent of its operating costs. As if that’s not bad enough, Miami spent $153 million on a people-mover system that costs another $40 million a year to operate and maintain yet earns no fare revenues.

Orlando, meanwhile, has spent $325 million on an commuter rail line whose revenues don’t even cover the cost of operating the ticket-selling machines. Jacksonville also wasted a bunch of money on a people-mover system. At least Tampa was able to tear out its people mover as it wasn’t built with federal dollars.

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Do I need to remind anyone that transit ridership is declining throughout Florida? From 2013 to 2017, ridership fell by 23 percent in Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, 16 percent in Tampa-St. Petersburg, and 10 percent in Orlando. In the first five months of 2018, it fell another 10 percent in Miami, 9 percent in Tampa-St. Pete, and 6 percent in Orlando. Overall, Florida transit ridership has declined 16 percent since 2013 and another 8 percent in the first five months of 2018.

According to the American Community Survey, the 187,000 Floridians who took transit to work in 2016 is a decline from nearly 196,000 transit commuters in 2015. We’ll learn in September what it fell to in 2017. In any case, it seems to the Antiplanner that the problem is not that transit needs more money but that too much money has already been spent on transit.

Clearly, the Influencers aren’t actually influencing anyone to ride transit. Nor have the billions of dollars that have already been thrown at transit done anything to really improve Florida transportation. In fact, transit appears to be a dying industry. So why do 40 out of 50 of them believe that the state should spend more money on transit? The answer is that too many people who think they are smart aren’t living in the real world.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

7 Responses to Florida Influencers Are Ignorant Idiots

  1. prk166 says:

    Think of Jacksonville ‘s Skyway, it’s bell-bottom inspired people mover, as hearing and cooling center fit the homeless. Half its anemic usage comes from them. But there are far more effective ways to get them relief from the elements than spending 5 million a year running minibus rd along a thick concrete rail in the sky.

  2. prk166 says:

    Btw it shouldn’t be surprising that purple in a dieing industry, newspapers, don’t see the obvious problems with dune zealots endorsing another during industry.

  3. MJ says:

    Some depressingly stupid quotes in that article from some of the “influencers”. The one from the archbishop who suggested limiting vehicle access according to some daily schedule took the cake. Not really sure what problem that is supposed to solve.

    I do give credit to the guy from FIU who suggested adopting a flexible approach, and recognized the growth and influence of demand-responsive transportation services in recent years. He might be one of the few sane ones in that bunch.

  4. Bat Mobile says:

    So I’m just wondering why the hard-core bent against bus and rail transit in your little blurb? The article pretty clearly indicates that increasing mobility options is what is needed, not spending billions on transit specific projects, and that is pretty darn accurate.

    Great job pinning yourself into a corner and ignoring the fact that you may have missed the point of the article. Also, when you quote that only 187,000 Floridians took transit to work, you may want also point out how Florida transit agencies provided tens of millions of passenger trips in that year. It is not a useless product by any stretch. Just sayin.

  5. Bat Mobile,

    I’m not against transit. I’m against throwing more taxpayer dollars at transit when it hasn’t worked in the past. The article is about infrastructure, and as my post shows, infrastructure spending on transit in Florida has been a miserable failure.

    You say the article is about mobility options. Nationwide subsidies to transit now exceed $50 billion a year yet ridership is declining. Apparently, the vast majority of Americans think they have enough mobility options without transit that is slow, expensive, and inconvenient.

    While Florida transit agencies may have provided tens of millions of trips in a year, that number is swamped by the roughly 60 billion total trips taken by Floridians each year. You can make any number look big by counting it over a long period of time, but in this case it is still an insignificant portion of the whole transportation picture.

  6. C. P. Zilliacus says:

    Bat Mobile wrote:

    Also, when you quote that only 187,000 Floridians took transit to work, you may want also point out how Florida transit agencies provided tens of millions of passenger trips in that year.

    The Antiplanner wrote:

    You can make any number look big by counting it over a long period of time, but in this case it is still an insignificant portion of the whole transportation picture.

    Strongly agree with The Antiplanner.

    Transit patronage is usually about daily passenger trips (or boardings) on weekdays. That is how it should be measured, which is also consistent with how highway use is measured in many states.

    Citing annual transit patronage is not exactly honest, and it is done to increase anemic-sounding passenger counts (or often boarding counts) to a number that sounds more substantial, such as those for Florida statewide, and should be ignored.

  7. Scott says:

    Re: Bat’s comment on commuters & annual ridership, the latter is more than 500 times the former, based upon 2 rides per weekday (250). Most of those commuters have a car also, maybe even a majority.

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