Are roads more important than rail?

Mark Holan, Staff Writer for Tampa Bay Business Journal

Friday, August 20, 2010, 12:24pm EDT

There has been a lot of talk this week about whether the precise route of Tampa’s proposed light-rail transit lines will be known before voters decide Nov. 2 if they want to pay a 1 percent sales tax to build the system.

But that might not be the most important issue of the warming referendum campaign.

“I think the sleeper, the real key component, is the list of road improvements we have throughout the entire community,” said Tampa Bay Partnership President Stuart Rogel. “If you don’t think transit is important, focus on the road improvements.”

Rogel is one of the leaders in Moving Hillsborough Forward, the coalition of business and civic groups supporting the transit tax. I sat down with him and other MHF campaign leaders Thursday.

“We are going to spend a lot of time talking about rail, but what we’ve learned from other communities is that when you present this as a package of improvements that the interest and support is broadened in that community,” Rogel said.

The tax proposal calls for using 75 percent of the revenue, about $180 million a year, for light rail and expanded bus service. The remaining 25 percent is dedicated to road improvements.

More than three-dozen road and intersection projects, many of them in voter-rich precincts far from any eventual light-rail lines, have been targeted for $428 million in tax money over 10 years.

Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority has refined the light-rail corridor alignments between downtown and the University of South Florida and New Tampa, and between downtown and Westshore and Tampa International Airport, to a few main choices.

HART chief executive David Armijo has promised more details about the proposed alignments and cost before public hearings on Sept. 25 and 30.

But Tampa still is further along with such details than other Sun Belt cities that have voted on transit, insisted David Singer, a Holland & Knight attorney running the MHF political campaign.

“HART started out with 30 options,” he said. “Now they have it down to two choices.”

With summer drawing to a close (in all things except the weather) and the political parties deciding their November candidates in Tuesday’s primary, the transit supporters expect their campaign to kick into high gear.

“We think folks are starting to pay attention,” said former Congressman Jim Davis. “Regular folks are asking practical questions about all aspects of the plan.”

We wonder if Rogel is right. Will the referendum get pushed over the top because of roads instead of — or in spite of — rail?