As part of maintaining the focus on passing Greenlight Pinellas, the Yes on Greenlight campaign on Monday had American Public Transportation Association Vice President for Policy Art Guzetti making the media rounds.
Guzetti knows a lot about transit systems around the country, and is an unabashed supporter of the Greenlight proposal, which would raise the sales tax in Pinellas County a penny to bring an additional $100 million to PSTA to help fund an expansion of the bus system and create a 24-mile light-rail network, while eliminating the portion that homeowners pay in their property taxes currently to PSTA.
"It's not unusual to lose the first time," Guzetti says, referring to how a light-rail proposal offered in Hillsborough County lost big-time in Hillsborough County in 2010. As was mentioned back then, voters in Seattle, Phoenix and Salt Lake City — which all currently have such light-rail systems — rejected such proposals the first time it went to the ballot.
"That's all part of the learning curve," Guzetti says. "But what's interesting about that is that once you have it, once you see it, observe the benefits of it, you can feel the excitement of it... Once they have it, and have sampled it, they want more, and it's usually the pressure of ... how can they build it faster." He says that in the 28 metro areas that have such systems had the opportunity to expand, 27 of them did so.
"And when the Tea Party says it's not working, if it's such a disaster, why are these areas voting to grow their systems?" asks Kyle Parks of B2 Communications, which is working on the Yes on Greenlight campaign.
As the website CityLab reports, for the past 30 years light rail has been the most popular mode of new public transportation for many U.S. cities, as billions in local, state and federal money has been invested in over 600 miles of new light-rail lines. And cities that have existing "heavy-rail" lines, like Washington D.C. with the Metro and Atlanta with MRTA, are actually now adding light-rail to their transit options as well.
Local transit agencies PSTA and HART boast of record ridership nearly every month, but both agencies say that they won't be able to keep up and enhance ridership unless they get more federal funding, which would come their way with a successful referendum (Officials in Hillsborough County are gearing towards a transit tax in 2016).
Guzetti says that, in fact, federal funding is at its high-water mark, despite the chatter about dysfunction in Washington D.C. He says the money is still there from the feds, but a local community must show their own financial commitment by passing measures like Greenlight. However, the highway trust fund, the source of most federal funding for the country’s roads and transit infrastructure, has seen revenue fall short of expenditures for more than a decade.
That's due in part to the fact that the gas tax hasn't generated enough money in recent years to keep pace with the rising cost of construction. Between 2002 and 2012, federal gas tax revenue fell by $15 billion, or 31 percent in real terms, while state revenue dropped by $10 billion, or 19 percent.
"There is money out there," Guzetti says."It's competitive ... you have to show that you're not just moving people but your plan is such that you're connecting it to economic growth and energy efficiency — there's a whole set of criteria."
That gets to transit-oriented development, which both men tout is what will flow into Pinellas after the light-rail network is completed. Although critics say that development hasn't prospered in some areas, Guzetti says people need to "open their eyes," referring to what he's seen happen in places like Denver and Salt Lake City.
Parks refers to what's been happening with SunRail in Orlando. His office provided CL with a worksheet showing that there has been a "significant increase in development" along the current 32-mile line, including a $60 million shopping center and $200 million worth of retail.
Voting by mail will start in the next week or so, with the final day that Pinellas residents can vote on Greenlight taking place five weeks from tonight, November 4.