But Bush wisely listened to voices inside the DOT and in the private sector who didn't think it wise for the state to auction off such a huge piece of productive capital infrastructure. The various toll roads owned or operated by the state collectively amount to its second-biggest revenue-producing asset, after the lottery -- last year it brought in more than half a billion dollars, with 90% of the revenue coming from drivers who use the toll roads to commute to work.
Jim Ely, who had run the state's turnpike operations since 1989, was among the group that made the presentation to the governor in 2000 to try to convince him to keep the toll roads. Bush, he says, listened openly, asked a lot of questions, and then paused. "It was the longest 10 seconds of my life," Ely says. The presentation swayed the governor, who asked the group, which included then-DOT Secretary Tom Barry and former DOT Secretary Walter Revell, for a set of recommendations on what to do instead of selling off the toll roads.
Those recommendations became the basis for legislation, enacted in 2002, that consolidated turnpike operations into what's now the Turnpike Enterprise. The law keeps the Turnpike Enterprise under the DOT but frees it from many of the bureaucratic rules that apply to other DOT divisions.
Ely, 54, is not your average career bureaucrat. The first nonengineer to run the turnpike division, Ely served as the DOT's inspector general and has an undergraduate degree in business, an MBA and a doctorate in public policy administration. Revell, who has served governors from Askew through Bush over more than 40 years, calls Ely a visionary and one of the most able managers in state government he's ever seen.
Ely's been nudging the turnpike toward "public sector motives using private sector methods" since he became director in 1989, and his track record running the toll roads laid the groundwork for the state's willingness to experiment with the Turnpike Enterprise approach. In 2000, he relocated the turnpike's headquarters from Tallahassee to Orlando to be nearer its customer base, reduce the cost of supervising the operations and to help foster a sense of independence. That corporate-style decision said a lot about Ely's commitment to getting more accomplished than waging bureaucracy. During his tenure, all turnpike construction projects have opened on or ahead of schedule, and ratings agencies have upgraded the turnpike's bond ratings.
Under the new Enterprise structure, Ely can hire and fire managers and employees based on their performance. He's put all 4,200 employees through customer awareness training. A survey of the 1.4 million drivers who use the toll roads found levels of customer satisfaction just about unheard of for a state agency. "The whole concept is running it like a business. There's nothing quite like this in the rest of the U.S.," says Ely.
Oversimplified, Ely's agenda for the Turnpike Enterprise is to better leverage the Enterprise's revenue for two main purposes. One, to build additional toll roads where needed. Two, to upgrade existing tollways and expand the use of the SunPass transponders that enable tolls to be collected electronically. Electronic collections now account for 36% of Enterprise revenue; Ely's shooting to boost that figure to 50% by the end of next year. Ely shows off a thin, credit card-sized transponder that's being tested to replace the 800,000 cigarette pack-sized devices now in use.
The Turnpike Enterprise's most ambitious plan, however, is to use electronic collections to eliminate toll plazas and toll collectors on urban interstates like the Sawgrass Expressway in Broward County. Presently, there are only two "open-road tolling" expressways in the world -- in Toronto and in Melbourne, Australia.
As part of Orange County's Mobility 20/20 plan, the Turnpike Enterprise proposes to revamp the I-4 corridor from Polk County to Volusia. The roadway would feature six general use lanes, a rail corridor and two to four express toll lanes where drivers with transponders could -- without stopping at a tollbooth -- access a lane that would let them bypass traffic congestion. The cost would depend on the time of day the driver used the lane, paying more during rush hour, for instance. Electronic bulletin boards would advise drivers of the cost and time savings at a given moment.
The things to watch as the Turnpike Enterprise experiment proceeds are whether it can withstand inevitable attempts by legislators to meddle and inevitable jealousy from other divisions of DOT that don't enjoy its freedom. Future DOT secretaries will have to understand and support the Enterprise approach.
In addition, the Turnpike Enterprise will have to maintain both its financial performance and the integrity of its decision-making in building tollways. Floridians don't like traffic but are queasy about the environmental and political issues that road-building poses. The Enterprise will have to use its freedom carefully, making sure that accountability doesn't get lost in the process. And ultimately, there is the question of who will succeed Ely.
In the meantime, other states and some countries are interested in the model that Ely and the Turnpike Enterprise are creating. For the moment, Florida has a cutting-edge idea with the right manager and the right structure in place to make it work. Even if Florida's congressional delegation can get a more favorable distribution of federal road-building money to the state, the success of the Turnpike Enterprise will be vital if Florida is to even come close to meeting its transportation needs.