It is a tribute to that love of trains -- and to the skill of well-heeled companies eyeing billions of dollars in taxpayers' money -- that the idea of a bullet train for Florida survived as long as it did. It is a tribute to Gov. Jeb Bush that one of several impressive things he did in the early days of his administration was to say the state will spend no more money on it -- even after an entreaty from now-defunct Florida Overland Express (FOX), the train-building consortium comprised of a big engineering firm, Fluor Daniel, and two manufacturers of railroad equipment. "We suggested to the governor that if he wanted to go a different way with high-speed rail, we'd be interested,'' says David Edney, FOX's chief executive officer.
The question is whether Bush's "no more'' will stick. Or whether, as happened before, the high-speed rail idea will resurface in a few years -- backed by some of the same interests, playing off the same mythical image, willfully ignoring lots of evidence that the train won't serve its stated purpose.
A consultant, Wendell Cox, compellingly detailed the basic reasons why the most recent train proposal was a bad idea. Cox' study shredded virtually every assumption advanced by FOX and the state Department of Transportation, the public sector's chief cheerleader for the project.
The train was going to cost the taxpayers much, much more than the $6.5 billion "maximum" that state bureaucrats -- even the estimable Ben Watts, former head of the state DOT -- kept promising. By comparison, for example, the private developers of a proposed bullet train in Taiwan, whose route is about a third shorter than that of the Florida train, estimated the building costs alone for their train at $11.8 billion.
Cox (it should be noted he was hired by the James Madison Institute, which is now merged with the Foundation for Florida's Future, which was founded by Jeb Bush) also detailed a slew of urban transportation projects that cost much more than promised to both build and operate, and which attracted many fewer riders than projected. Cox made a solid case that the Florida train simply wasn't going to deliver on its stated goal of reducing traffic. The state, according to the Cox study, had essentially entered an agreement with a group of businesses that guaranteed those businesses a profit by creating an open-ended commitment from the taxpayers of Florida.
The real problem with the bullet train is that it probably was never a good idea for Florida, and became even less of a good idea as suburbia's grip on the state intensified. In 1973, the density of Florida's urban population stood at 2,200 people per square mile; by 1984, when momentum behind the bullet train had first begun to build, it had fallen to 1,800 per square mile. That trend has continued, and by next year urban densities will reach about 1,200. By contrast, urban densities in Lyon and Paris, two cities connected by a French bullet train, have about three and six times as many residents per square mile, respectively. It's just an unfortunate matter of fact that Florida lacks the densities to support high-speed rail. It may never develop them. That fact always seemed to get lost on the bureaucrats and businesspeople who jetted off to Europe for spins on the fast French and Italian trains. They always gushed about what a great ride the train was, and never talked much about the transportation systems and cities at the ends of the line: Arrive at the Gare du Nord in Paris, and you're either within walking distance of where you need to be, or it will be quickly accessible via bus or subway. Arrive in downtown Orlando on a bullet train from Miami, and International Drive or Disney World is still a good commute away.
The story reflected in the density figures is the story of sprawl, and the state's commitment to regulatory policies and a taxing structure that stimulate growth by sprawl. Until those policies and structures change, the state's communities will continue to have trouble finding "organizing centers'' for real estate -- centers of activity with real identities that it makes sense to link together. Train stations alone wouldn't have helped.
Is the bullet train really dead? Stan Marshall, the president of the James Madison Institute, says Bush's decision, however final it may sound, will offer "no assurance" that the train is finally dead if state lawmakers decide to rev it up again. The train nearly died once before, in 1990. Then, just-elected Gov. Lawton Chiles sharply criticized a proposal to use public money to build the train, but turned around a few months later and authorized a new process to name a new developer.
So let's wait a year or so and see if a new proposal for a "study'' of high-speed rail surfaces -- probably right after some report about traffic congestion. Then we'll see what Gov. Bush and lawmakers do, and whether the romance of the rails heats up once again. Congestion will continue to grow as a problem in Florida as long as we grow by sprawl. The question is whether the state, in considering options to deal with it, can get off its fixation on the tracks.