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 Traffic on the Veterans Expressway
Tampa Bay does not normally compete with Baltimore, unless it is in the American League East. Baltimore is much bigger than Tampa and located in one of the most densely populated and industrialized regions of the world.
Yet, Baltimore is one of the few cities that rivals Tampa for the largest carbon footprint in the country, according to a story in the Tampa Tribune. In 2009, Baltimore produced 9.2 million metric tons of greenhouse gases and Tampa produced 8.9 million metric tons. Tampa, a city of about 335,000 people, produced more greenhouse gases than Boston, Seattle and Miami. In the case of Miami, it was almost twice as much.
"That's a shocking number," said Christian Wells, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of South Florida and director of the university's Office of Sustainability. "I'm a bit surprised at the amount that the Tampa community, as a whole, is emitting."
This week, WUSF-FM reported about the experience of Tampa Steel and Supply. In July 2010, Tampa Steel and Supply welcomed then candidate Rick Scott to their facility for a campaign event. But, the company that has laid off four of 11 staffers is not a fan of the Governor.
“One of the biggest things that really upset me and turned me against him was when he turned down the high speed rail and gave all that money back,” co-owner Bruce Goldman said slowly shaking his head in disbelief. “You know he talked jobs, jobs, jobs and then he took all those jobs away from the construction industry. There would have been so much more work, so much more money coming in from the Tampa-Orlando corridor and that just really hurt us.”
We don’t think about greenhouse gases, until we need an asthma inhaler or our children can’t go outside for P.E. because of the day’s air quality ratings. We don’t think about the trickle down impact of transportation on jobs until the engineer or welder across the street gets their house foreclosed on.
Transportation in Tampa Bay and everywhere, has never been about building a cool train or a landscaped parkway to the suburbs. It is about improving the quality of life and creating economic development.
Going back to the building of the New York Subway system, improving air quality and the quality of life for a community has been a theme of mass transit. The jobs created by transportation are not just for those that run the busses, trains and boats of a system. There are construction jobs to build new stations, welding jobs for new steel work, and jobs for machinists who repair engines and transmissions. That’s not counting the residential and commercial development that occurs over and around new transit lines and highways.
Tampa Bay cannot be a community that is suffocating under the smog of greenhouse gases and turning away from opportunities to create jobs. To do so is to damage our personal health and our region’s economic health.
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