Florida Governor OKs SunRail

In what could be an ominous decision for the future of federal transportation funding, Florida Governor Rick Scott got out of the way of SunRail, a costly commuter-rail project in Orlando. While his Tea Party supporters strongly opposed the project, Scott said that he didn’t have the authority to kill the project.

As reported in the New York Times a few days before Scott’s decision, the main backer behind SunRail is Representative John Mica, who chairs the House Transportation Committee. Mica has a history of supporting pork barrel for his district, but after the 2010 election he at least paid lip service to fiscal conservatism. When Governor Scott killed the Florida high-speed rail, which Mica had supported, Mica got with the program and quietly joined the Congressional coalition that effectively killed the entire high-speed rail program.

The SunRail project will eventually cost $1.2 billion, more than a third of which will be spent buying right of way from CSX. CSX is one of Mica’s big supporters, and the Times openly accuses Mica of supporting the project as a favor to the railroad. By vetoing the project Scott could have given Mica cover for its failure.

As it is, Mica will now have a hard time convincing other members of Congress that they shouldn’t include earmarks or otherwise promote pork barrel in their states or districts when Mica himself is gobbling such a large piece of pork for his district. This will make the debate over the 2011 transportation authorization bill a bit more intense.

The Times states that SunRail will cost $1.2 billion and “is expected to serve just 2,150 commuters a day when it starts operating.” That’s not quite fair, as the 2,150 commuters (that is, round trips) is for the initial operating segment whose cost is expected to be “only” $357 million for the first half of the project. When amortized over 30 years at 4 percent, and using the long-range ridership prediction of 1,850 “new” round trip riders who are not already riding transit, this represents an annualized cost of $11,000 per commuter — enough to buy every new daily round-trip rider a brand-new Toyota Prius every other year for the life of the project.
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While the Times may have made the wrong comparison, the project’s backers have made totally outlandish claims about its benefits. “Over the next 25 years, SunRail will create more than 250,000 jobs,” claims Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer. It is possible that he means “250,000 person-years of work,” meaning 10,000 jobs a year, but even that is unlikely.

As for SunRail’s impact on central Florida transportation, can you spell “insignificant”? Table 4-4 on page 4-17 of the environmental assessment admits that building the commuter-rail project will increase delay-times at four grade crossings by an average of 38 percent. Amazingly, the assessment dismisses this deterioration of traffic conditions by stating that the intersections would have been rated F with or without the project.

Pages 4-20 and 4-21 of the assessment proudly state that, since so few people will be using the train, there will be very little new traffic around the planned train stations. “The project will shift a small amount of traffic away from existing roadways to origin stations,” says the assessment. “The project will not adversely impact the major roadway movements at the station driveway locations.” I am sure that will be a big relief to anyone living near one of the stations.

Despite the negligible effects on transportation, the assessment claims that the project “provides substantial transportation benefits.” Too bad it never says what those benefits are other than a small increase in total transit ridership.

The real cost of the project is the precedent it sets for the rest of the nation. If the chair of the Transportation Committee in a supposedly fiscally conservative House of Representatives can work behind the scenes to make sure a pig like this is funded, there will be every incentive for other members of Congress to promote their own pieces of pork.