We Have Plan to Ease Traffic Gridlock But No Money, Florida County Officials Say
Broward County, Florida, government leaders say they have a plan to help ease traffic gridlock. They just don't have a way to pay for it.
"We just had a transportation tax go down in flames," Broward County Planning Council Chairwoman Anne Castro said Dec. 1, referring to an effort to raise Broward's sales tax from 6% to 7% that was rejected by voters on Nov. 8. "So apparently they're not feeling the pain yet."
Castro made the comments during a Planning Council meeting, the first since a Sun Sentinel report in October detailing traffic congestion in South Florida. The report found that public officials intend to exacerbate congestion in order to drive people to use mass transit.
"We're going to make them suffer first, and then we're going to figure out ways to move them after that because they're going to scream at us to help them move," Castro said in the article.
During the Dec. 1 meeting, Castro said she never meant to imply the county didn't have a long-range transportation plan.
"I didn't mean to insinuate there is no plan," she said. "The plan is painful. It's not just about building roads."
To keep traffic moving along, Castro said traffic signals need to be synchronized and bridges should not be raised during rush hour.
Weston Mayor Dan Stermer, secretary of the Planning Council, lamented the failed campaign to raise the sales tax. The tax increase, called a money grab by critics, would have generated an estimated $15 billion over 30 years.
In the end, voters rejected an increase in the sales tax for infrastructure, but narrowly supported one for transportation. Because the two plans were linked, neither will be put in place.
Broward County officials are already talking about another transportation tax plan that would come before voters in 2018 or 2020.
Lighthouse Point Commissioner Mike Long, vice chairman of the Broward Planning Council, said he thinks next time it will pass.
Long urged looking at alternative solutions.
"You have Metrorail in Miami," he said. "I don't know if that's a super success or not. But do we look at these things? What can we do outside the box?"
In Miami, Metrorail began service in the downtown zone in 1986 and has helped spur development in the urban core, experts say. But extending Metrorail would cost $2 billion, or $100 million for every mile, said Michael Hernandez, a spokesman for Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Jimenez.
Because of the cost, Miami-Dade officials are looking at other options, including light rail and an express bus system.
Deerfield Beach Commissioner Bill Ganz, who also sits on the Broward Planning Council, agreed with the need for mass transit and other solutions to help ease congestion on our roads.
"It's got to start somewhere," Ganz said. "We're not going to pave our way out of … this giant traffic jam that is not going away."
Panel member Bernard Parness, a Deerfield Beach resident, said plans that call for taking away traffic lanes to beautify medians and add bike lanes will likely only make things worse.
"If you don't have good public transportation, you can't solve the problem," he said. "People will not give up their cars and take buses that don't run on time. Narrowing streets is just going to increase traffic. It's not going to solve the problem. What are we doing? Creating a bigger problem."
