Clouds Loom Over SunRail Commuter Train in Florida

It is amazing what some politicians will do in the middle of a financial crisis.  One congressman from Florida has taken it upon himself to make it just a bit worse. According to The New York Times, Representative John L. Mica (R-Fla.) has been working quite diligently on “a 61-mile commuter rail project that the federal government ranks as one of the least cost-effective mass transit efforts in the nation.”  With spending $1.2 billion in taxpayer’s money on the project one would hope that, at the very least, there would be projections of heavy ridership.  Unfortunately, the rail line is only projected to serve roughly 2,150 commuters per day when operations begin in 2014.  It appears that Rep. Mica is planning to use federal and state tax dollars to pick up the tap for a billion dollar project that only a couple thousand people will use.

The question is why Rep. Mica would want federal and state taxpayers to pony up the money with such low ridership projects.  There is no indication that he is doing this for political support because he does not seem to have much support from his own state for this project. According to a January 28, 2011 article in the Orlando Sentinel, Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) has clearly demonstrated his feelings for the project as “he froze four contracts, worth a total of $235 million.”  The governor seems to recognize the idiocy of the project and was able to at least postpone this waste of valuable tax dollars for a few months. Sadly, no good deed goes unpunished as he has had to deal with the consequences of making a smart fiscal decision. The most detrimental consequence for the governor is whether a project to dredge the port of Miami will go forward.  According to Transportation Nation, “Mica didn’t directly say he was linking that decision to the Governor’s approval of the SunRail commuter train … but he did bring up the similar timings for the two decisions, ‘ I get to authorize the project for the deepening at the federal level. Right now I’m studying them very closely as the Governor is studying the rail project very closely and I’ll make my decision next month in June about the time he makes his decision.’” This heavily insinuates that the fate of the project to dredge the port of Miami was being dangled in front of the governor to ensure his cooperation, and the governor, sadly, followed like a horse with a carrot on a stick.

The lack of support for the project does not stop with the Governor. There has been opposition even from Mr. Mica’s hometown of Winter Park from resident Beth Dillaha.  According to The New York Times, Ms. Dillaha “had never been involved in politics but was disturbed at what she heard.” This makes sense after finding out “that the state commitment to pay for the operation and maintenance of SunRail ends 7 years after the trains start running, and locals will have to pay after that” says Mike Synan of Fox Orlando. So, it is even more confusing for Rep. Mica to support the project considering that even the people that would benefit from the train are critical of the project.

The answer (yet again) may be money.  Many companies involved in the railway project have donated money to Mr. Mica over the years. The largest of these donations is the freight rail giant CSX (which will receive nearly $432 million from this project) which has donated nearly $60,000 to Mr. Mica.

The congressman has proven himself to be nothing more than another stereotypical politician concerned only with exchanging campaign contributions for unneeded and unnecessary projects.  The most disturbing aspect of this project is that Rep. Mica is the Chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that will be crafting the next multi-year and multi-billion transportation authorization bill.  Previous transportation bills have been loaded with earmarks and the 2005 bill saw the creation of the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska.

Taxpayers can hope that continued negative publicity and the recent debate over the debt ceiling will convince Rep. Mica to stop the program dead in it’s tracks.