As I prognosticated in 2002, those who pushed for this tax over-promised and over-sold this as a cure all antidote to Miami-Dade County’s traffic problems. This is why I publicly opposed this sales tax referendum, although I usually don’t oppose referendum petitions. We all know that our traffic congestion problems will not resolve themselves very easily, as long as we have a County with almost two and a half million residents and several thousand tourists and visitors on any given day, and where automobiles outnumber state licensed drivers. If we can’t convince motorists to leave their automobiles at home now and use our transit system to commute to work, we will lose the best opportunity to sell our mass transit system to the people of this community. However, even with gasoline prices over $4 a gallon and climbing steadily, working class people can’t,  abandon their cars in favor of a bus, if we don’t provide a comprehensive network of buses that offers frequent, on time, reliable service at the neighborhood level.  If a motorist is asked to leave the car at home and walk half a mile or a mile in 94 degree weather to the nearest bus stop and then wait under the hot sun and rain for a bus that may take over half an hour to arrive and then make several bus changes in order to reach their jobs, they will not do it.  First of all, it will take them several hours worth of commuting time to get to work with a chance of arriving late.  Furthermore, they will be drenched in sweat from the humidity or rainwater when they arrive at work after waiting for a bus under the elements. 

The voters were also promised five new metro rail corridors, when the ½ percent sales tax could not even pay for the cost of building one of these Metrorail corridors.  They were over relying on most of the monies for these grandiose Metrorail expansion plans coming from the federal government (60 percent of the funds) and the state government (25 percent of the funds).   When you rely so heavily on most of your funding coming from federal and state competitive grants, then all your plans are pie in the sky.  The so plans to build five new metro rail corridors were in reality: “if the federal government selects our plan and fully funds it, then we can deliver on these promises.”  However, they did not tell the people funding under these federal programs is through a very competitive process with little guarantee of award and where there are much more advanced and promising  transit projects in other cities throughout the nation.  This process for soliciting federal dollars for rail projects has become even more competitive as funding has been reduced to fund the costs of the war abroad.  The State of Florida has also been forced to make massive multi-billion dollar budget cuts this year because of declining sales tax receipts with an economy heading into recession.  The only Metrorail project currently being advanced for federal funding, of the five rapid transit lines promised to the voters under the ballot question, does not even meet the federal standards for rider-ship and thus has been rejected for funding.  This is the 9.5-mile extension of the Metrorail system along NW 27th Avenue which will allow Broward County residents and tax payers to board Metrorail at a new  NW 215th Street (County line) station and commute to work in Downtown Miami.  The Orange Line project may alleviate the traffic commute and the traffic congestion for those Broward County motorists and taxpayers who choose to live in Broward and drive down I-95 every morning to work in Miami, while those Miami Dade County residents and motorists who have been paying this tax since 2002 are forced to continue to put up with the traffic congestion as they commute from West Dade, Kendall, Westchester, Fontainebleau, Sweetwater and South Dade every morning.

Now in order to fund this Metrorail expansion, the Miami Dade County Transit Department is proposing to raise the fare on the existing bus and Metrorail system by 50-cents. The base fare for trains and buses would increase by 50 cents to $2 and monthly passes from $75 to $100 effective October 1st.   In spite of an economy that is heading into a recession and an unemployment rate that continues to climb every day forcing more people into the unemployment lines and into poverty, the Department proposes to increase taxes by 33 percent on the poorest segment of our community through this bus fare increase.  Furthermore, to pour more salt into the wound, the Department has begun cutting existing bus services by eliminating bus routes and reducing bus frequency on other remaining bus routes.  An estimated 650 people take 1,300 trips a day on those lines which the Administration eliminated.   The referendum question asked the voters to approve a plan for expanding bus service by 17 million miles of new bus service, and they only delivered 11 million miles at most and now have begun to reduce that number.  They promised to the voters to increase the buss fleet by placing 635 additional buses on the street, and again they have failed to deliver on this promise.  Thus, instead of using the ½ percent sales tax approved by the people to improve the transit system and entice motorists to use the system now that gasoline prices are at an all time high and have not hit their peak yet, the Administration is proposing to reduce the level of service to the people and reduce the reliability and timeliness of the system.   This is unacceptable and unthinkable at a moment when a gallon of gasoline exceeds $4 a gallon and rising rapidly.  We also have an economy that is worse than it has been in the past 30 years.  It is important to remember that a transit system exists so that the citizens can move in and about big urban areas in an appropriate manner.  Mass transit systems are not planned or designed as revenue producers or profitable endeavors.  The are designed to serve the people.  Serving people and convincing people to abandon their automobile in favor of mass transit means you have to make it convenient and easily accessible for them to catch a bus.  This involves providing a comprehensive network of bus routes with feeder routes at the neighborhood level.  These feeder routes may ride empty until the rider-ship is established through proper promotion and advertising.  However, if you don’t provide these feeder routes and rely strictly on providing bus service on the main roads as the Transit Department has done since its inception decades ago, then the rider-ship will continue to stagnate.  “You will continue to hear commuters say: “I am not going to walk a mile in work clothes to catch a bus with this heat and humidity.”

However, if the desire is to make a profitable transit system, then lets privatize the entire Transit Department.  We can get a European company come in and run the entire rail and bus system for a fraction of our cost, because they don’t have to deal with government employees or government unions.  They don’t have to deal with delivering service to serve every segment of the community, whether the route is a dog as some transit employees call them or whether you may be  providing service to some our neediest residents.  A private company would run the service for less money and turn around and make a profit by reducing maintenance costs, operating costs, overtime costs, marketing costs and most of all top heavy administrative costs by an inefficient Department.  Believe me with the Euro as strong as it is, if we put out a request for proposals, like the Administration did with the infamous and questionable tunnel project, you will have dozens of European and multi-national companies vying to take over our Transit Department.  Maybe then we will have an efficient system.

What is next on the chopping block for the Administration?    Is the Golden Passport for Seniors and Patriot Passport for poor military veterans is at risk of being eliminated by the Administration as well?

The Voters of this community were deceived in the worst way in order to garner support for the ½ percent sales tax.  It was called the People's Transportation Plan, but in reality the people of Miami Dade County would not have supported the plan if they realized that after almost 6 years of paying this tax, all they had to show for it was a 33 percent increase in bus and Metrorail fare and the reduction bus service throughout Miami Dade County.  All this for the sake of expanding Metrorail service to the Broward County line on a project that does not have the support of the State or federal governments.  After six years of collecting almost $1 billion from the people of Miami Dade County, the Administration could have delivered to the people a world class mass transit system using state of the art buses that resemble Metrorail trains on wheels and sheltered bus stops, including air-conditioned stations at major intersections, similar to the transit system in Curitiba, Brazil along with bus only rapid transit lanes and other road improvements.  You could have probably  increased the bus route grid to reduce walking distances in residential neighborhoods and increased the frequency of bus service at every location.   However, we have very little to show for all these tax monies collected from Miami-Dade County tax payers and the hopes of funding these five Metrorail projects using federal and state matching funds is realistically all but non-existent with the national economy continuing to decline and both the federal and state government cutting their budgets to the bare bone.   Even if these federal funding programs are restored and Miami Dade County is allowed to compete for these funds, you are looking at a process that would take dozens of years to see the fruits, between actually receiving the federal funds, acquiring the corridor through eminent domain, design and actual construction.   Meanwhile, our bus system will continue to decline into one of the worst systems in the world, congestion on our streets will continue to get worse and gas prices will continue to escalate well into the next decade, while we wait for the promised trains. In sum, total chaos.

The only rightful solution to this dilemma is to go back out to the voters in August or November and be honest with them for a change. Explain to them that there is insufficient monies to provide first class bus service and rail service.  Ask the voters to choose their preference through a straw ballot question.   Ask the voters if they would prefer to use the ½ percent sales tax to:

‘                  1) Improve our bus transit system with a grid of bus routes that provide efficient and frequent service, while providing bus riders with improved bus amenities to include sheltered bus stops and air-conditioned bus stations in high rider-ship corridors.   At the same time improve our road and highway system to reduce traffic congestion and improve safety through road calming features and other road safety features.

or to

‘                  2) Improve our Metrorail service by expanding the existing system along NW 27th Avenue north to the Broward County line at NW 215th Street, as well as expand the corridor West along State Road 836 to NW 117th Avenue.

We have to act, and act quickly to protect and improve the quality of life of the people of Miami-Dade County.