Otto: Scott rejecting rail puts Florida at caboose

Column

It's been a year since Gov. Rick (let's get to work) Scott said thanks but I have my own plane and turned down more than $2 billion in federal funding to construct a high-speed rail line between Tampa and Orlando.

I wanted the line built but also wondered how many people would actually use the train to get to Orlando in a hurry, unless you wanted to be first in line to ride the "Pirates of the Caribbean" attraction at Disney World.

The governor was even more to the point, suggesting that the $2 billion was pretty much a down payment on disaster and that future expenses would cost Floridians billions of dollars.

He turned it down, and the money was immediately gobbled up by other states who wanted their own high-speed rails.

This week, after a drawn-out records request, Tampa Tribune reporter Ted Jackovics obtained a document from the Florida Department of Transportation.

The document is an analysis by two consulting firms hired by the state to examine things such as ridership, costs and whether the project might make money.

One of the consulting firms projected a deficit in the train's first year of just more than $9 million.

The other thought the train might make as much as $17.6 million in its first year.

Both firms, however, agreed that after 10 years the project would be making a substantial profit while carrying more than 5 million passengers a year.

The projected figures did not include what could happen if the project continued its proposed expansion, first from Orlando to Miami and then in later years continuing up the eastern corridor and including Atlanta.

The Tampa-Orlando project was also about as close to "shovel-ready" as these things get.

More importantly, in the near run, it was considered almost as much of a job stimulus program as a transportation solution.

I believe it was more than that.

We like to think that the private sector is the key to development and risk-taking in this country. But the private sector also is us — citizens who can't develop malls or build roads or launch rockets to the moon using our own 401(k) plans.

The high-speed rail project went far beyond getting people from Tampa to Orlando. It would also have demonstrated that Florida is about ideas and moving forward. The fact that the project would have benefited from federal seed money made it even more viable.

At some point it seems inevitable there will be a high-speed rail network that will connect the country and become as much a part of our transportation system as the interstate highways.

We could have become a part of that system as well as a destination for people looking ahead into the future. Instead we're more likely to add a few more lanes to an already overwhelmed system or stand in line at overcrowded airports.