County vowed a transit Rolls Royce; we’re getting a Ford

The trust safeguarding our transit taxes accepted half a loaf last week for the $368 million South Dade Corridor Bus Rapid Transit, cheering that it will be good service while also lamenting that it’s far below what the public was promised. Nobody said bait and switch.

The Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust put off until January a vote on keeping pledges of local and limited bus service on the corridor as well as the planned express service, and preemption of cars crossing the right-of-way so approaching buses wouldn’t have to stop.

The delay all but certainly shelves those promises for the corridor when it opens and perhaps forever. A resolution in January would be far too late to alter operating plans for a corridor that’s due to run by next summer.

The route is one of six Smart Program corridors that had been vowed when the half-percent tax for transit won voter approval in 2002. Opening the corridor will be the first step in adding that transit, 22 years later.

That long, slow trail to major rapid transit for our taxes was clearly in minds of trust members who praised detailed plans shown for the first time by the county’s Department of Transportation and Public Works. They loved animated bus depictions but repeated over and over that the operation at best could meet the formal and promised Gold Standard only part time.

Indeed, in only three hours of morning rush hour northbound and three hours in the evening southbound would the system zip buses through the 46 intersections along the 20-mile route from Dadeland South to Florida City by preempting cars from crossing when buses approach.

That would let buses clear intersections without slowing or stopping only 15 hours a week northbound and 15 southbound. The trust agreed that the pledge to the public had been traffic preemption both ways full time, weekends included.

County transportation department figures say that in preempted periods a bus could go from one end of the corridor to the other in 47 minutes stopping at 14 stations, when autos on US 1 next door would take 70 minutes, a 23-minute saving.

All other times, however, which would be without signal preemption, the trip would take 66 minutes by bus versus 70 by car. Calling that express service is a huge stretch. And that’s all but 15 hours a week in either direction.

Trust members, by not voting to seek more, agreed to get started now and aspire to do it as promised later.

“The operation is not static,” said Chairman Robert Wolfarth. “There’s fluidity to it and it can be tweaked over time depending on what we see going forward…. That’s very optimistic.” He said he hoped the route could someday be elevated over roads.

First Vice Chair Mary Street, noting that the northbound hours of preemption are only from 6 to 9 a.m. and the southbound only from 3 to 6 p.m., said she hoped times could be extended a half hour.

But some members also noted that when Bus Rapid Transit was sold to the county instead of more expense rail transit, South Dade residents who had pleaded for rail were promised that the buses could be a prelude to eventual rail once ridership hit its targets.

Without preempting cars from oncoming rapid transit, those members noted, any hope of rail would dissolve.

“We’re not going to have light rail on that corridor unless we spend hundreds of millions of dollars dealing with this issue,” said Robert Ruano. “We’re not going to have it. We’re not going to have Metrorail. We’re stuck with the buses. But that’s not what was promised, or at least in the statements that were made.”

Tweak some things now, he said, but work toward what citizens want.

We agree. Someday, we need to actually get all we were promised for our transportation tax money.

It all started almost two decades ago with creation of a trust to make sure the tax money would be used as promised. The trust was put into the ballot question back then because voters didn’t trust the county commission to spend wisely.

So we bought the tax at the polls. But commissioners dragged their heels on appointing trust members until they had spent much of the tax receipts to maintain and run old transit rather than build new as specified.

Next, commissioners delayed hiring a trust staff to monitor tax spending. The trust had to take the county’s word.

Then, in the Great Recession, the county commission voted to divert trust receipts again for maintenance and operations rather than for building. It was only this year that commissioners finally outlawed that practice formally.

Now, two decades into the tax, comes the first big project, the South Dade Corridor, and again it’s not all we were promised. It’s far better than what we have today, but it’s half a loaf. We were promised more. It’s like paying for a Rolls Royce and getting a really, really good Ford.

That’s one bind the trust was in: start driving the Ford next summer or keep waiting for delivery of that Rolls?

The other bind was that the trust’s job is to get Miamians out of cars and onto transit, or bicycles, or anything but private autos. Members made that clear last week.

But they also realized that the Florida Department of Transportation, which is paying part of the cost of the South Dade Corridor, doesn’t like total preemption of cars at Bus Rapid Transit crossings because that could back up auto traffic to and from US 1, which the state controls. The state isn’t going to put mass transit first.

“At some point,” said trust Executive Director Javier Betancourt, “as a county we need to make a decision as to whether we’re going to prioritize transit over cars.”

The decision by default to let that priority become just 15 hours a week northbound and 15 hours southbound was another half loaf.

In the end, we are aspiring to achieve all that we were promised but compromising to get the sometimes-rapid transit buses running and do something productive with our tax money rather than keep waiting in traffic.