(The following story by James Miller appeared on the Orlando Sentinel website on June 29, 2009.)
ORLANDO, Fla. –- Two months after a stinging defeat in the Florida Legislature, boosters of the proposed Central Florida SunRail announced today the project is very much alive.
“We are on target to keep moving the project forward,” U.S. Rep. John Mica, a Winter Park Republican, told an audience of SunRail supporters and media at the Metroplan Orlando headquarters in downtown Orlando.
In the spring, the state Senate rejected language backing the proposed 61.5-mile commuter-rail system connecting DeLand and metropolitan Orlando partly because of controversial legal liability provisions it included.
A rail-corridor purchase agreement between the Florida Department of Transportation and the corridor’s owner, CSX Transportation, allows either side to opt out starting Tuesday if the liability provisions aren’t in place.
But Mica said Monday CSX had agreed to not exercise the opt-out in order to give SunRail another chance to get state legislative support. CSX also agreed to rework controversial provisions, he said.
“We do have a firm commitment from CSX to renegotiate the terms of liability,” Mica said, “and that’s a major breakthrough.”
The agreement that was rejected by the Legislature would have protected CSX from financial liability for most accidents in the corridor regardless of who caused them.
Including operations, SunRail is expected to cost the federal government, the state and five local partners — Volusia, Orange, Osceola and Seminole counties and Orlando — $2.7 billion over 30 years.
SunRail proponents also said today the state would apply for federal stimulus money to blunt some of the costs.
They also promised to craft a worker- and labor-friendly agreement.
Union leaders blasted the language that went before the Legislature this year as a form of union busting and said it would create safety issues.
Meant to be a template for future commuter-rail in the state, it would have allowed the state to contract out certain work – such as maintenance and signal operations – along the SunRail corridor and future corridors rather than having CSX use its unionized employees.
Sen. Lee Constantine, an Altamonte Springs Republican who tried to shepherd SunRail through the Senate this spring, said he thinks a special session on the project is possible this fall.
“Having it in the light of day by itself . . . I think would be very positive for us,” Constantine said.