This past week, articles came out in the Tampa Bay Times , WTSP and Salon.com regarding Tampa’s “transportation mess.” These journalists appear toagree that Tampa would be a really great city except for itslack of light rail.
As an impending Tropical Storm (possibly soonto be upgraded to Hurricane) Isaac looms out in the Florida Straits, weshould take a closer look at these negative articles through a realistic lens.
August 24th was the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew,a Category 5 hurricane that decimated the east coast of Florida andtraveled west across the state and into the Gulf of Mexico.
The reality is that the City of Tampa, like all of Florida, from June 1st through November 30thof every year (six months/half a year), faces the possibility ofhurricanes emerging at any time. In 2004, Florida was hit with fourhistorically powerful hurricanes within a six-week period.
Charley became a Category 4 Hurricane on August 13th, 2004, with peak winds of 150 mph, resulting in 15 deaths (10 in Florida) and $14 billion in property damage.
Barely three weeks later, Hurricane Frances, a Category 2 with winds at 105 mph, made landfall on the east coast of Florida on September 4thbetween Ft. Pierce and West Palm Beach. Winds increased as it crossedthe state and emerged into the Gulf of Mexico across the Tampa Bay areaas a tropical storm late on September 5th. Frances was responsible for 42 deaths (32 in Florida) and nearly $9 billion in property damage.
Hurricane Ivan had reached a Category 5 status over Cuba and, after hitting southern Alabama with winds of 120 mph on September 16th, reorganized in the Gulf of Mexico and headed across southern Florida on September 21st. At its peak, Hurricane Ivan was the size of the state of Texas andproduced 119 tornadoes across the southeastern United States. HurricaneIvan resulted in $13 Billion dollars in damage in the United Statesalone and killed 25 people, including 14 in Florida. Thirty-two moredeaths in the U.S. were directly attributed to Ivan.
Tropical Storm Jeanne formed on September 15th. By the time it made landfall near Stuart, Florida on September 25th,Jeanne was a Category 3 Hurricane. The total number of deaths from thishurricane was 3025, including at least 4 in Florida. The propertydamage neared $6.8 billion.
Planners for the RepublicanNational Convention are making arrangements in the event that Isaacreaches hurricane status and aims for Tampa. The downtown area is at sealevel and faces the possibility of evacuation in the event of flooding.
Whatwould happen if light rail transit was available? This reporter was assured by HART that the trains would be stored at a sheltered locationprepared for such an event, built far away and high enough to avoid therising waters. In essence, this billion-dollar boondoggle would be useless! Remember Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana?
Tampaand its residents face evacuation from its downtown areas and wouldhave to rely on their personal vehicles or buses provided by the cityto those who do not have access to an automobile. And we do have some really nice bicycle paths if they would like to use them! But most of them are downtown only.
Sixmonths out of every year, a light rail system could possibly beunavailable due to hurricanes or even high winds or tropical storms,leaving thousands of people stranded and having to rely on thegovernment to aid in their evacuation.
Perhaps one of the primaryreasons that businesses and people continue to move into the suburbs intheir “nasty” urban sprawl neighborhoods is because of Tampa’s locationand threats of flooding in the downtown areas. Businesses cannot closetheir doors at every threat of high winds and flooding.
Theofficials at the City of Tampa, the Hillsborough County Board of CountyCommissioners, HART, and TBARTA insist that to be competitive wemust have an expensive light rail system as “Plan A” and that buses aresolution to move the most people the most economically and quickly. Whyin the world would we spend billions of dollars on Plan A?
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