TOLL POLITICS:Miami voters reject tax to end toll

Early indications had been that the tax measure – sponsored by the Mayor – might pass because an antitax coalition had to be formed from the grassroots up. Opinion surveys even a week before suggested tolls might go down to defeat though they indicated public opinion moving against the tax as compared to the beginning when it seemed to have solid support.

In the end the vote was decisively anti-tax/pro-toll despite strong support for the tax measure from area politicians of both parties, the media and much of the local and state establishment. A popular new Miami Mayor Alex Penelas (Dem) led the campaign for the tax increase, which he said was needed as the local match to get federal funds for some billions worth of new rail projects. He promised to use some of the tax revenues to eliminate tolls on the four toll roads of Miami-Dade Expressway Authority (MDX). Penelas supporters formed a TRANSIT NOT TOLLS COMMITTEE to garner support for his scheme. Immediate removal of MDX tolls was the carrot dangled before voters, because the transit projects were years in the future.

MDX went ahead with its supposedly unpopular toll increase -–which doubled tolls -–July 10, less than two weeks before the poll, much to the delight of the Mayor, who was gleeful, thinking the toll hike would swing opinion in favor of his tax scheme.

Members of the MDX board were initially critical of the tax-for-tolls proposal as disruptive of the turnpike’s expansion plans (TR#38 Apr 99 p1) but the board cut its own deal with the Mayor under which it would have been guaranteed a portion of the tax revenue to continue its program of highway expansion without tolls. Also supporting the anti-tolls proposal was a law passed by the FL state congress which allowed the Miami-Dade government to override the legal powers of the MDX board and to remove tolls if it came up with the extra tax revenues.

The Mayor presented his plan as a tax-for-tolls proposal, even though the tax was designed to raise much more money than the toll repeal would have saved motorists. Penelas seized on the announcement last spring of an intended toll increase by the MDX to launch his campaign for the area sales tax, which would have gone from 6.5% to 7.5%. The mayor rolled out a KPMG report arguing for the sales tax increase as the best way to fund transport in the area. The people disagreed.

Tax died in a landslide

As the MIAMI-HERALD said the Mayor’s anti-toll plan “died in a landslide” and it called the result a “clear vote of no confidence” in local government. The paper said: “All of the elaborate and expensive rail transit projects that Penelas and county traffic planners pushed will be shelved. Politically, the vote was a blow to Penelas, a highly popular politician who — despite personal charisma — failed to win voters to the cause on which he staked his political reputation. It was Penelas who proposed the tax-or-tolls idea and who subsequently campaigned for it.”

Penelas said after the landslide against him was revealed: “Unfortunately, a majority of voters did not agree with the solution, and they were not ready to entrust us with more of their tax dollars at this time. The decision was ‘no,’ and, of course, I respect that.’’

The tax was to provide local match and operating support for some 90mi (150km) of new rail transit lines over 20 years, and about $50m/yr for roads.

The defeat of the proposal came despite the Mayor mobilizing major resources for the TRANSIT NOT TOLLS committee – $2m in cash and an estimated $3m in in-kind contributions. By contrast the anti-tax committee raised $125k.

A former state senator and North Miami mayoral candidate Josaphat Celestin and another Miami politician Maurice Ferre formed a THE PEOPLE AGAINST THE NEW TAX organization early June. Its name changed to STOP (see above) it was spearheaded by veteran anti-transit tax campaigner Richard A. Friedman and a car dealer Norm Braman it rallied homeowner associations, black Baptist clergy, and a number of other groups to help it save the toll roads. The anti-tax group stressed the futility of huge spending on transit in a community that was heavily car-oriented.

The HERALD said the vote was a vindication of the idea that “expanded transit would not work in a community where the automobile reigns.”

The anti-tax groups also said that building contractors would be the main beneficiaries of the grandiose transit plans. And they played on a long history of broken promises about the value of transit in Miami, and revelations of corruption and waste.

The anti-tax vote this July has plenty of precedents. In 1976, a similar proposed 1% sales tax for transport was defeated 65% to 35%; in 1990 another sent down 54/46; and in 1991 when they tried again 69/31.

Again and again voters have rejected the local establishment’s plans for tax-based rail transit, and rejected their notion that people should get out of their cars and use trains. Yet the establishment comes back repeatedly with the similar anti-car/anti-road notions.

MDX: “We will move forward”

The key player now in the future of transport in the region, noted the MIAMI HERALD, is the MDX, whose highways Penelas targeted for toll repeal. Instead tolls will be the centerpiece of transport financing for the immediate future. Expressway Authority Chairman Sonny Holtzman said after the vote that the MDX would now “move forward immediately with our $2.75 billion expressway improvement program for addressing roadway gridlock.’’ (see TR#33 Nov 98 p1)

MDX plans include:

•rehab and widening of its main East-West pike FL-836

• build a 3km $90m Interconnector (IC) linking FL-112 and FL-836 near the airport

• an extension westward 3km of the FL-836 which presently terminates at the HEFT,

• a new east-west toll road NW74thSt eastward 8km from the HEFT to NW 72nd Av

• a 2-lane NW25th St Viaduct over the FL-826 Palmetto Exwy to provide improved access on the west side of Miami Int Airport, a $95m project to rely on electronic tolling

• a 2.9km 4-lane tunnel principally for trucks to provide motorway quality access to the port of Miami from I-95/FL-838 and I-395/MacArthur Causeway. Cost $400m.

• begin plans for new 14km Central Parkway from the airport northward

BACKGROUND: Miami vies with Chicago and the San Francisco Bay area for 3rd place below Los Angeles and Washington DC in the Congestion League Ladder as measured by TTI’s Road Congestion Index.

Miami area roads have been sadly neglected the past 20 years with federal and state tax monies squandered on spectacularly underused rail projects. Miami is 44th ranking in 50 US cities in terms of motorway-equivalent lane-km (fwy lane-km + 0.38 arterial lane-km) per thousand population. Miami with 2563 mwy-equiv lane-km has about the same population (c 2m) as Minneapolis, St Louis, Baltimore, Seattle, Pittsburgh and Dallas but they have 3300, 4142, 3339, 3039, 3045 and 4206 lane-km of highway, according to a TRnl spreadsheet. By this measure of similar sized cities Miami could do with 25% or 700 lane-km more highway. It needs higher quality as well, as the other cities have a higher proportion built to modern standards at interchanges. The Miami system is plagued with weaving problems from over-close entering and exit ramps, leftside IC ramps, abrupt lane drops and short merge distances.

Formed in 1995 MDX issued $80m of bonds in December 1996 to fund acquisition of four old urban-area toll roads from the Turnpike District of the state DOT. These total 50 centerline km (31mi), 285 lane-km (178 lane-mi) with four mainline toll plazas. The system was basically built in the 1960s with only minor widenings since.

Miami area tollroads were horribly neglected under the stewartship of the state DOT. Toll rates were not raised through decades of inflation and became mere ‘gesture tolls’ – one of the last places in the US to have 25c tolls at mainline toll plazas, for a per-mile charge of 1c to 3c (1/2c to 2c/km).

On two of the pikes there is only eastbound tolling and ramp plazas were never built anywhere in the system, so a large proportion of trips on the network – by some estimates two-thirds – are not tolled at all. Revenues were – before the recent hike – only $20m/year on 220k tolls/day. The tolls covered operating costs but at a low level of maintenance and with no surplus to support rebuilds or expansion. Service was correspondingly poor with serious congestion.

MDX is a regional toll authority formed in 1995 after the failure of 1990 and 1991 attempts to get local residents to accept higher gas taxes via ballot to fund highway improvements. The recent ballot is a ringing popular endorsement of the user-pays principle of tolling, coming just 19 days after tolls were doubled to 50c and in the context of promises of further toll increases, and a clear rejection of proposals for large-scale tax-based rail. It also came early in the introduction of electronic tolling, before the benefits of the new technology are evident. (Contact Servando Parapar MDX 305 637 3277)

INTERVIEW

Architect of the toll victory

Norman Wartman, chair of the Dade County Citizens Transp Advisory Committee (CTAC) and former vice-chair of the MDX board says he didn’t want to take a prominent public stance because of his official positions but he helped to assemble data and arguments for those who were fronting against the tax & transit proposal. He told us after the vote:

“We won and we won big. People are fed up with the planners and politicians who have been responsible for letting the highway system of this area rot away. Ordinary people are practical and sensible. They can see we need better roads and that paying a toll is not a bad way to pay for roads, especially once you have a transponder and can pay it once a month like your telephone or electricity.

“This vote is a great victory for commonsense over the big mistaken idea that has underlaid everything that has been done here in Miami in the past 25 years, the idea that if we neglect the roads that people will ride trains. For 25 years we have been deep-sixing needed road improvements, one after another, just killing them, forgetting them, shelving them, and running down the bus transit system too, with this extraordinary notion that rail is the answer. It isn’t an answer, and everyone but the special interests knows that it isn’t an answer, but it just won’t die. Money has been so badly misspent (in Miami) that the people don’t trust the politicians. You can’t blame them. They claimed the first rail line here would attract 200,000 riders in its first year. It got 12,000 and now we are in its 15th year and it gets 50,000 riders. Now the same planning experts say if we spend billions of dollars more and build 90 miles of rail lines we can get 200,000 riders. Who cares really? It won’t make any difference. This area has 9.5 million trips per day, projected to rise to 13.5 million trips per day in 20 years. Who cares about whether rail is 150 or 200 or 250 thousand riders? It is a few months of the annual growth of area trips. Rail is so small it is almost irrelevant yet they want to spend this vast amount on it. It constitutes 6/10 of one percent (of total trips) now. Even if they get their 90 miles and even if the planners of the rail are correct in their forecasts this time and it is one point something percent, this does absolutely nothing for the 98 percent plus of people who will be relying on the roads. This vote says it is time to get real. It is time to address our problems on the roads with some roadwork.”

Wartman says that Miami has been losing population and business and he blames poor transp priorities.

“The transit system here is hub and spoke and jobs aren’t like that anymore. Our hub is in relative decline. Businesses have been moving to more convenient locations. And if they can’t find them in this area they are moving them to places like Orlando, Houston and Phoenix, and to a lot of smaller practical places where they upgrade their roads, places where you can get where you need to go without being stuck for ever in traffic. People don’t get on trains if you don’t fix the roads. They go some place else where there are decent roads. We have had 25 years of mistaken priorities, of plans for spending 60 or 70 percent or something of the capital funds on a mode that serves less than one percent of the trips. It is craziness. It is time to be practical for a change.”

Wartman hopes the MDX will not be distracted from its plans. The MDX plans, he says, are good plans, but they will mean nothing to the people except to the extent they get built and provide tangible improvements in mobility.

“We have so much latent demand here, it isn’t going to be easy to demonstrate improvements. MDX has $2.5 billion of projects that are good projects and will yield good returns for the people but there is a window of opportunity of about 2 or 3 years for MDX to deliver results, or its plans may get swept away, just as the vote we have just had has swept away all the transit projects.”

This vote should be reassuring to the bankers, he says, who should get some reassurance that the voters of this area are commonsense people who will support tolls, and understand the need to generate revenue to service debts.

“The vote should help the bond rating of MDX. The bankers can see that people accept tolls and don’t think they can get something for nothing.”

He says the ambitious Central Parkway project deserves a higher priority than the MDX presently is giving it. He would like to see investors brought in to build it and run it.

Another idea he wants to push is “super-arterials” – highways of less than motorway standard but which could be upgraded in level of service for those willing to pay with an electronic toll transponder. He’d concession out the right to install an overpass at a signalized intersection for the central lanes. People wanting an express ride would equip themselves with a toll transponder and take the central lanes and zip up and over the intersection by using the electronically tolled overpass. He says it should be possible to do what he calls an “overpass overnight” through standardization, prefabrication and using new materials. He thinks these might be financed at a nickel or a dime per vehicle.

Cities could concession out intersections or complete corridors for such optional overpasses. And where such mini-toll bridges aren’t warranted he thinks signals can be better managed. The bane of signal optimization has been that there is never any revenue stream to pay for good signal coordination. Again, why not make users pay for the corridors where expensive signal optimization is in place? US-1, Wartman says, would be a perfect first candidate in southeast FL for investor-driven improvements such as selected overpasses and signal optimization. It is the major arterial paralleling the Atlantic coast just a mile or so inland all the way from Palm Beach down to South Miami. He thinks that so long as motorists have the option not to use such tolled facilities they’d be politically acceptable.

“If you didn’t want to pay the nickel to go over the intersection, you’d stick to the outside lanes and wait for the lights like you do now.”

Wartman is also keen to get on with HOT and toll express lanes and thinks variable pricing makes “great sense.” Wartman paid tribute to Robert Poole of the REASON FOUNDATION who, he said, provided the pro-tolls/anti-tax group with “ideas, arguments, enthusiasm and inspiration” at a critical point in the campaign. (N. Wartman 305 694 1002)