Recent News Articles
Put Florida to work
As expected, Florida's legislative leaders this week called on lawmakers to attend a special session in Tallahassee, where they'll vote on substantially expanding the state's commitment to passenger rail. What's surprising — and nerve-racking for backers of SunRail, Tri-Rail and high-speed rail — is that Senate President Jeff Atwater and House Speaker Larry Cretul...
Roll call of all 41 legislative session no-shows
The Florida House released a list of 36 members -- nearly one-third of the total membership -- who have excused absences for one or more days from the week-long special session on transportation that will get underway Thursday. With five excused senators, it means fully one-fourth of the 160 members of the Legislature will miss part of the session that leaders say...
Atwater takes over the train
Florida Senate President Jeff Atwater is on to something when he argues for shifting the state's transportation network from an obsession with roads to an investment in rail. In a memo that went out Monday, Sen. Atwater, R-North Palm Beach, calls for a reappraisal of rail in Florida's future. He goes beyond questions about commuter rail that the Legislature must answer...
Commuter rails, Florida needs to get onboard
The state of Florida has a trust fund, into which has flowed an unexpected amount of money in recent months, thanks to higher gasoline sales and increases in vehicle registration and driver's license fees. For the struggling commuter rail system in South Florida, Tri-Rail, this could be good news. Lawmakers could use some of the anticipated $154 million extra to help...
Don't lose momentum on Tri-Rail; Gov. Crist should call special session in December
Finally, some forward movement on securing the future of Tri-Rail and establishing SunRail, a commuter service in Orlando. Accomplishing these would keep Florida in the running for $2.5 billion in federal stimulus money for a Tampa-Orlando-Miami bullet train route. Federal transportation officials have made it clear that Florida won't get a share of the $8 billion, which...
Rail Opportunity May Pass Us By
You've surely heard the story of the two hikers who came upon some strange tracks in a clearing: as they stood on the tracks, arguing about what sort of animal might have left them, a train ran over them. The villain in that story, of course, is neither the train nor the tracks but rather the ignorance that prevented those hikers from grasping the implications of their...
Unexpected tax dollars could clear way for SunRail
Florida lawmakers may have a way to avoid the thorny issue of raising taxes to pass commuter-rail legislation: Motorists may be paying enough at the gas pump to bail out South Florida's beleaguered Tri-Rail commuter system. State economists this month have increased their estimates of how much tax revenue will be flowing into Florida's road-building trust fund in future years....
SunRail nears 20-20 vote in Senate; gas taxes save rental surcharge
A special lawmaking session over high-speed and commuter rail inched closer Monday as legislative leaders and the governor said they were ready to tap surplus money discovered in the transportation budget rather than raise taxes on rental cars. The surplus money -- about $76 million for the current and next budget years -- should be enough to help fill a hole in...
Fates of SunRail, South Florida's Tri-Rail run on parallel tracks
MIAMI – Veronica Jackson pored over a training notebook as she sat in a Tri-Rail commuter train one day last week. Glancing over, she could see thousands of cars and trucks creeping along Interstate 95, brake lights blinking as darkness fell. "I love it," said Jackson, 24, an officer for the Transportation Security Administration. "I don't have to...
In a position to win
Two weeks remain for backers of SunRail to get Gov. Crist or Tallahassee's legislative leaders to call a special session, where lawmakers would get one more crack at approving the train for metro Orlando. They've said they'll call it — if it's got enough votes to pass. The difference between now and when SunRail died in the final weeks of the last regular legislative...
