Keep drive alive if rail vote defeated

One of the questions central to next year's vote on an additional sales tax for transit and roads in Hillsborough County is what happens if the tax is rejected. What's plan B?

The long-range plans drawn by elected and appointed officials at every level have a Tampa-based rail system at the heart of the transportation network.

If voters reject the penny tax, says Bob Clifford, executive director of the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, "it slows us down but certainly doesn't stop us. For the first time, we understand the vision and where we want to go. We've never had that before."

The vision was built on the results of dozens of meetings, at which the public offered its best ideas.

The consensus was that rail transit would be needed to serve key business centers. A much-improved and expanded bus system would serve urban and suburban areas off the rail lines. Some roads would be widened, intersections improved and pedestrian safety enhanced.

Managed lanes - that is, lanes with some use restrictions or perhaps tolls - also are in the plans.

If the tax fails, the question will just have to be brought up again. Meanwhile, the Tampa region would fall further behind its business competitors, all of whom have rail systems: Atlanta, Charlotte, Denver, Phoenix and St. Louis, to name a few.

Like those cities, this community, too, has decided to stop chasing development in all directions, Clifford says, and instead has decided to build efficient corridors to support growth.

"There is very little opposition to that approach," he says.

That's because there's no better idea if the region is to grow.

Federal money flows to projects with local tax support, which explains why so little transit money has come here.

And big projects are planned years before they are actually built.

Clifford points out that the approvals for today's highway improvements around Tampa International Airport began in 1989.

Another big question - how to add Pasco, Pinellas and other counties to a Hillsborough-subsidized rail system - is not an insurmountable obstacle.

"We don't want what happened in roads," he says, referring to the disconnect along the Pasco-Hillsborough line, where Pasco's plan to send wide thoroughfares into Hillsborough has met successful resistance.

Clearly, regional management will be needed, but quiet neighborhoods also need a voice and protection.

The model Charlotte is using invites surrounding counties and cities to the planning table but only gives them a vote when they contribute a fare share of money.

Twenty years ago, many business and political leaders acknowledged that in 10 or 20 years, the Tampa area would need rail.

But no money was allocated, and no plans were finalized.

Clifford is exactly right when he says, "We've got to start building stuff."

Plan B is to try again with plan A.