End bait-and-switch on transit costs, benefits and timelines

To get Smart Program transit OKs, officials cite prices far below their ultimate level. It’s a wink and a nod. As long as the public can pay, officials gloss over how big the bill will be or how far it’s risen.

That was one of five revelations at a Transportation Planning Organization vote last week to move to top priority and commit money for the Northeast Corridor rail service from downtown Miami to Aventura, with a price of $588 million and sure to rise.

Approval of the organization, which oversees transportation spending in Miami-Dade, was pivotal to commit local funds and get needed state and federal money.

Although this project has been outlined since 2016, questioning by a few planning board members unearthed surprising details that have not been public.

One is that actual use of this rapid transit is on a slow track. Esteban Bovo Jr., planning organization chair and Hialeah mayor, made that clear before the vote.

As head of the county commission’s transportation committee in 2016 when the Smart Program was laid out, Mr. Bovo had said in a meeting that his aim was to get at least one of the six corridors rolling before he left the committee chairman’s role. He left years ago and none is running.

“I will not be alive when it ends up happening,” the discouraged mayor said at last week’s meeting in introducing the vote, then apologized with a wink for saying it in public.

An unstated project element is that while the other five legs of the Smart Program are to be public transit, the Northeast Corridor is likely to wind up under for-profit operator Brightline, whose parent owns the tracks. Brightline has told investors that it expects to run the system that the public is paying to build.

County Commissioner Kionne McGhee asked if a contract had yet been signed with Brightline and was told no. There was no direct discussion of who will operate or profit from the new transit.

Maybe that’s too far into the future to know, as Mayor Bovo implied, but the public should be told the plans. Shame on them if there is no operating plan.

The public has also not been advised that the Northeast Corridor line is part of a grander plan already on track to create commuter rail from Miami to Palm Beach.

Yes, those are the three counties that the publicly owned Tri-Rail already serves – or will serve once Tri-Rail can get its trains into MiamiCentral Station operated by Brightline, using Brightline tracks for the final segment. There was no mention of Tri-Rail or how a private service built with public funds might affect what we already have.

County commission Chairman Oliver Gilbert III dug deeply, saying “I just want us to have a clear understanding of this before we vote on it.” Thank goodness someone was asking, because staff wasn’t volunteering much.

“This isn’t actually public transit, right?” Mr. Gilbert asked. “I mean, it is but it isn’t.”

In reply, Eulois Cleckley, county transportation chief, outlined more than we’d learned before.

“The intent of this project is that it is the southern segment of a larger regional commuter rail service that will be provided that will connect Miami to Broward and ultimately to West Palm Beach,” Mr. Cleckley said.

“To provide additional context,” he said, “Broward is currently in a [Federal Transit Administration] grant process today. They have a shorter, smaller segment and they are identifying local funds and through the grant process will be in a position to be rated for federal funds as well. And so this really is considered a regional project. We call it the Northeast Corridor, but this is the southern segment of the Coastal Link, which is a regional commuter service.”

That could be valuable, but it’s not what the public was told we were doing, as Mr. Gilbert indicated, because it is the fifth surprise: the North Corridor might not meet the principal goal of the Smart Program, which was to help people get to their jobs faster.

“We need to acknowledge that it’s commuter rail, and I don’t know that it actually serves the purpose of the people… in the north part of the county getting to the employment hubs in the central part of the county,” he said. “We’re expanding commuter rail to the eastern part of the county… and we’re expanding that rail in a way that empowers people in Palm Beach County.”

Mr. Gilbert didn’t object to that, and we don’t either. But his point is valid: we must tell people exactly what we’re doing rather than a bait-and-switch promise of something we have no intention of doing.

Bait and switch applies especially to cost. When Commissioner McGhee asked if the Northeast Corridor is still listed at $588 million he was told it is. But when the organization was told the cost in 2021 it was $345 million.

And when county Commissioner Roberto Gonzalez asked later “What was the initial funding cost at its inception? What was that estimate?” he got a long pause from staff and someone said “Stand by.”

“I don’t have the initial cost, but the initial local match [share of the cost] was $103.5 million,” said Lisa Colmenares, Transportation Planning Organization program development manager. Now, she said, that local cost is $196 million. As for total initial cost, “I would have to provide that information at the next meeting and provide it through the executive director.” That, of course, will be well after last week’s unanimous approval.

“What assurance exists that this cost won’t go up?” Mr. Gonzalez asked.

“At this time this is the cost we’re providing, and we’re in the project development and environmental phase,” Ms. Colmenares replied – meaning that a vote of approval would be for a blank check, as Mr. Bovo quickly noted.

“There is no assurance that the cost won’t go up, and the longer this stuff takes the more it’s going to cost,” he acknowledged. At one time, he said, the total Smart Program was to cost $6 billion and “that price has probably gone up also…. It’s going to take a lift to solve the transportation problems of this county.”

Mr. Bovo is on point. He’s also right that we need to attack those problems rapidly and broadly.

But it would be nice if government was candid: rail to local jobs is more than a decade off, the costs we are told are far below what we will ultimately pay, in the end not everyone will be served in travel to jobs, benefits will go beyond Miami-Dade, and private enterprise will reap some of the benefits of the new service the public will build.

As both Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Bovo said, it’s still vital to move ahead as fast as possible. But let’s be transparent about what we’re doing.