From Civic Strategies (worth subscribing to):
How the Wheels Came Off a Highway Proposal
When a local highway authority proposed this summer building a 120-mile toll-road “beltway” around the region, it seemed perfectly in line with reality. Tampa Bay’s highways are congested, toll roads are in vogue, so let’s lay some pavement! And on the day they announced it, authority planners thought they had a sure thing. “Every elected official and every staff member at all the agencies we have talked to have been supportive,” the authority’s planning director told the Tampa Tribune at the unveiling.But in no time the proposal started hitting walls. The first was Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio, who told the Tribune, “Mass transit is really the future of our community. There can always be another roadway that could be built, but building new roadways isn’t cost-efficient anymore.” Others weren’t even that charitable. Some elected officials lashed out at the tendency of highways to produce sprawl, particularly perimeter highways. And environmentalists noted that the proposed road ran through sensitive lands, including well fields that supply the region with its water.
The business community, too, was cool to the idea. Over the last year or so, business leaders have come to share Mayor Iorio’s belief that building more roads is a waste of money and only transit, including some kind of regional rail transit, could actually solve the region’s congestion problems. “With the growth of this area and the amount of traffic that we’re going to incur over the next 10 years, we have to find alternative ways to get people from point A to point B,” one leading developer told the St. Petersburg Times.
Complete article here.
