Find Money for Transit

Palm Beach Post Editorial

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

South Florida and state officials have the right idea in studying how to combine mixed-used development with mass transit along the Florida East Coast Railway from Miami to Martin County. The estimated $800 million that they spoke of several years ago for acquiring the freight-heavy FEC right of way, however, may now exceed $1 billion. So the priority must be the money needed to get there.

Monday's kickoff in West Palm Beach was the third such session in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties. Interested parties ranged from developers and contractors to members of the National Association of Railroad Passengers to elected officials from Boca Raton to North Palm Beach. Among their concerns were the east-west bus and rail linkages that will be as vital as any going north-south, safety versus no-horn zones, navigation concerns around the Loxahatchee River and environmental issues throughout the proposed line.

Identifying such issues is a necessary step toward the consensus the various interests must reach on decisions such as prioritization and where transit stations might go by 2012. The state Department of Transportation is managing the study. The public can follow the project at www.sfeccstudy.com. Money for it comes from the counties' metropolitan planning organizations and the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority.

A change in management may have improved the old FEC culture, which had precluded cooperation and limited Tri-Rail passengers to the CSX tracks farther west. Further inaction in taking advantage of the track that runs through 28 downtowns will mean more traffic inefficiency and roadway congestion. In this 5.2 million-person region that is the nation's sixth-largest, nothing will happen without a designated source of regional money to match up with federal and state dollars.