In these difficult economic times, budget cuts are inevitable.
The Florida legislature has passed on approving a $2-a-day rental car surcharge that could have provided $44 million a year in revenue for Tri-Rail.
Tri-Rail is, of course, the public transit rail way that stretches from Mangonia Park down to Miami.
Thousands of rank-and-file workers count on Tri-Rail to get to work every day. The rental-car fee was voted down because it was linked to a plan to create SunRail, a 61-mile commuter rail transit proposed as a service for four counties in Central Florida, including the City of Orlando.
I don’t have the details on the merits of SunRail, but it seems Tri-Rail is just now hitting its stride. More people are riding Tri-Rail than ever before.
But with property tax collections down, Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties are likely to drop their contribution to the Tri-Rail from $7 million a year each to the required minimum, $4.1 million, Tri-Rail Chairman Joe Eggelletion told The Palm Beach Post recently.
If Tri-Rail has to drop 40 percent of its trains, as Eggelletion has suggested it will have to do, Tri-Rail will become less convenient. That’s not only a real problem for workers who count on it to get to their jobs, but it reverses the progress Tri-Rail has made in attracting new riders the past few years.
More Tri-Rail riders mean less cars on the road. Fewer cars means less pollution.
A healthy mass transit system is a good thing for a lot of different constituencies.
We’ll see what happens.