Week of July 2, 2009
Tri-Rail service saved at the expense of capital improvement dollars By Risa Polansky Tri-Rail is to remain on track for the next year. But saving service comes at a price. Money normally set aside for capital improvements is to fill operations budget holes in the new fiscal year after the commuter rail's governing board last week approved the stopgap. The move means maintaining 50 weekday train trips and continuing weekend service. Officials for months have feared they'd have to kill weekend trains and nearly halve weekday trips after another failure in a long line of attempts to secure a dedicated revenue stream through the state. Even after the service cuts, a system shutdown would have loomed as soon as 18 months later. Shifting the capital dollars means saving service for the new fiscal year, which began July 1. None of this year's capital projects has been derailed, as projects are generally planned and budgeted for a couple of years in advance. But those local dollars are normally hedged to gain matching funds from the state and the feds to make improvement projects here possible. After last week's decision to plug budget holes with that money, "we don't have any local dollars to match against state or federal," said Joseph Giulietti, executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which operates Tri-Rail. "We have what we've already collected, but we don't have any for the future." Though this year's capital plan remains intact, improvement and expansion projects could suffer "possibly in two years," Mr. Giulietti said. For instance, the authority is planning extensions in the three counties where the 72-mile commuter rail service runs — Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach — but each needs grant funding to get the wheels turning. Without a local funding match, the outlook is bleak. "I think that it's a shame that we're going to this level," said Bruno Barreiro, a Miami-Dade commissioner and vice chair of the transportation authority board. "We still don't have a dedicated funding source. We're still giving this agency a Band-Aid approach." The Band-Aid also keeps the authority from defaulting on a federal grant agreement that requires Tri-Rail run 48 train trips a day. Had service dropped below federally mandated levels, the feds could have demanded back the $256 million in grants that funded Tri-Rail's double-tracking. Though officials are relieved to have dodged that issue for now and pleased service is to keep on chugging, they fear for the future. Said Mr. Barreiro, "We're going to use up all our funds available, and next year we're going to be in a hole if we don't get our dedicated funding source." |
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