(The following story by Lindsay Peterson appeared on The Tampa Tribune website on May 11.)
TAMPA — In the days after the collapse of the state’s $649 million deal with CSX Transportation, both supporters and opponents said the same thing: The goal of creating a commuter rail system in Florida is still alive.
“This didn’t kill commuter rail. It killed a badly negotiated contract,” said state Sen. Paula Dockery, R-Lakeland, who organized the opposition to the CSX deal in the legislative session that ended May 2. “This gives us an opportunity to craft something better.”
State Rep. Dennis Ross, R-Lakeland, who worked with Dockery to defeat the CSX deal, said there are other ways to bring commuter rail to Florida. One of them is to work with Amtrak.
Federal law gives Amtrak the right to use existing freight tracks. It runs trains on CSX lines to Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando and Miami.
“We’ve talked to them,” Ross said. “They do commuter rail and intercity rail” across the country. The Florida service would need to be more frequent and reliable, but those problems could be solved, Ross said.
The state had planned to spend $649 million to buy 61 miles of CSX railroad tracks in the Orlando area for commuter rail. About half of the money would have been used to help CSX expand its freight operations statewide.
Officials who supported the deal haven’t said whether they’re willing to work with Dockery and others to fashion something new. In fact, one of them, U.S. Rep. John Mica, R-Winter Park, was so angry about the collapse of the deal, he said Florida was at risk of losing federal funding for future transportation projects.
But Monday, he and other Orlando leaders gathered to announce that the Central Florida commuter rail project would go forward. State Department of Transportation spokesman Dick Kane confirmed the state’s support for the project.
“This is Central Florida’s number one transportation priority, and we will work with them on developing projects based on their priorities,” he said.
Also Monday, CSX Chief Executive Michael Ward sent a letter to Gov. Charlie Crist, Mica and U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, D-Jacksonville, saying the company would honor its commitment to sell its tracks.
CSX is a Fortune 500 company based in Jacksonville.
Ward also said the company still planned to expand its freight operations into a new hub in Winter Haven. But for now, the state’s financial help for that project is on hold.
“Currently, CSX would not get any funding for infrastructure improvements without an agreement,” Kane said, though plans to spend about $200 million for five rail overpasses on state roads will continue.
Expenditures Already Approved
During this session, lawmakers sharply questioned the cost of the CSX deal, but they had already approved the expenditures in previous sessions. They didn’t, however, realize what they were approving, they said, because DOT and Central Florida lawmakers pushing the deal kept them in the dark.
The 2005 legislation that set aside money for the track purchase was a growth management bill. It never mentioned CSX. And in the years that followed, the specific expenditures were parceled out in DOT work programs that were hundreds of pages long.
But one piece was left for the Legislature’s approval this year. CSX planned to keep running freight trains on the tracks it was negotiating to sell for commuter rail, and it wanted the state to approve a “no-fault” liability agreement. It would make each party, the state and CSX, responsible only for damages to its own property or people.
That meant, for instance, that if CSX were at fault in a freight-commuter train collision, the state would be liable for all passenger harm. If people beyond the tracks were injured, in a derailment, for instance, the state and CSX would split the cost of the damages, regardless of who was at fault.
The state would spend at least $2 million per year for liability insurance. Lawsuit payouts would be limited to $200,000 per accident, but the Legislature could approve higher amounts in specific cases.
CFO Cautions About Future
The state trial lawyers association opposed extending the state’s protection from lawsuits to a for-profit company. In the last week of the session, state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink added her warnings.
Commuter rail is important, she wrote to legislative leaders, but “taxpayers should not assume an undue amount of liability as a condition of a proposed public-private partnership.”
When the state negotiates commuter rail in the future, she wrote that, “we should appoint a team of experienced negotiators to advocate on behalf of Florida taxpayers.”
One of Dockery’s main concerns with the CSX deal was that the company’s expansion into Polk County would have increased freight train traffic through downtown Lakeland. The residents never had a voice in the negotiations.
“It’s time to say to DOT and CSX: ‘OK, guys. If you really want to go forward, let’s sit down to negotiate. Let’s include the trial lawyers, the railroad unions, Plant City, Lakeland, Ocala. … Let’s really negotiate in good faith,'” Dockery said.
“And if we truly want commuter rail, then why not have it between Hillsborough and Volusia County? And why not look at Amtrak?”
She and Ross met with Amtrak representatives in March, when the rail company met with several Florida officials, including Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio.
“I think that Amtrak is a good option for increased travel between cities,” Iorio said last week. “The Amtrak officials indicated that it works very well in other states, although it takes a great deal of state subsidy.”
Amtrak trains going to New York and Miami stop at Tampa’s Union Station twice a day.
Amtrak officials came to Florida because they regularly visit the major cities in which they operate, but they’re also trying to establish more state and local partnerships for commuter and intercity routes, said Todd Stinnis, director of government affairs.
About 20 local and regional government agencies have deals with Amtrak for commuter or intercity rail.
Amtrak is working with Florida officials on the Central Florida commuter rail project to share stations in Kissimmee, Winter Park, Orlando and DeLand. Amtrak’s Tampa-to-New York route runs over the same stretch of CSX tracks that the state planned to buy for the Central Florida system. But the Central Florida commuter system would have more stations and more frequent stops.
Neither Stinnis nor Drew Galloway, transportation planning director, would give details on what kind of partnership they could set up with the state. But Galloway said, “We think Florida has great promise as having the right characteristics to run a very useful corridor service.”
He said, “With investments … it could be very competitive.”