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Recent News
April 7, 2009
SunRail: Commuter rail needs support
© Florida Times-Union
Floridians need our help, and there is no greater stimulus opportunity in front of the Florida Legislature than SunRail.
SunRail is the spine of a regional rail network unanimously supported by elected officials in four of the state's most densely populated counties.
As legislators who care deeply about Florida's future, we cannot afford to ignore that reality.
- We cannot afford to turn our backs on more than 13,500 new construction and operations jobs and more than $1.5 billion worth of economic stimulus - the bulk of which our constituents could realize within months.
- We cannot afford to ignore more than 246,000 additional jobs with an estimated economic impact exceeding $7.3 billion that transit-oriented development around SunRail station stops is expected to generate. A new 9-mile rail line in Charlotte has generated more than $1.8 billion of economic impact for that city in just a year.
These are real dollars, real jobs.
That money and the associated tax revenues will help fund our schools, improve health care and support law enforcement. It will help us leverage even more federal dollars to support those vital programs. Killing SunRail will have the opposite effect.
Why? Because almost all of the state funding dedicated to SunRail comes from new-start transportation dollars and fixed guideway bonds that must be used for transportation projects. Are we really interested in putting a halt to all transportation projects, statewide? That's the precedent we'd be setting here.
What's more, the cash allocated to SunRail is not available today - it's programmed over five years. And it's a pittance compared to the long-term recurring revenues that SunRail promises to generate.
Certainly, we need to fund education and health care. But approving SunRail is key to making good on our promises.
As legislators, do we really want to turn our backs on more than $682 million in federal support earmarked for the SunRail project - money that the federal government will happily invest in another state eager to reap the jobs and economic benefits of rail transit?
Do we really want to torpedo any chance of federal funding for future rail connections in other parts of the state, most immediately in Tampa Bay and Jacksonville? SunRail is vital to Florida's future.
As legislators, it's time to put our state economy back on track.
SEN. LEE CONSTANTINE
Altamonte Springs
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