Word: orlandos
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...exploded in recent years - Florida is set to pass New York as the nation's third largest state - its road and air corridors have become more gridlocked and eco-unfriendly. Which is why Floridians voted in 2000 to build a high-speed bullet-train service between Miami, Tampa and Orlando. By 2004, however, then-governor Jeb Bush, who had insisted the estimated $6 billion cost would in reality top $20 billion, had persuaded Florida voters to drop the idea...
...ideas fueling HSR is that the U.S. in the 21st century has grown beyond a country of cities and suburbs to what urban-studies expert Richard Florida calls "mega-regions." Central Florida's I-4 Corridor, between Orlando and Tampa, is a prime example. Mega-regions "are natural economic agglomerations whose market potential can be harnessed if they're linked up by high-speed rail," says Florida, director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. "If there's any place in the world right now where this makes sense, it's the U.S. Cars and jets...
...alternative energy. That's largely because he knows a chorus of voices in Florida and the rest of the nation still fears that bullet trains, despite the federal largesse, will turn out to be a white elephant whose costs have been lavishly underestimated by the Obama Administration. Even the Orlando Sentinel, which covers a city that would absorb a large share of the $1.5 billion Florida will seek to help fund a $2.5 billion Orlando-Tampa HSR line, warned in a recent editorial that the Sunshine State is "really not a strong candidate for high-speed rail." The reason...
Florida's HSR boosters say its rail project could create as many as 20,000 jobs. In addition to the $1.5 billion in stimulus money to fund the 100-mile Orlando-Tampa line, which will likely use the more eco-friendly electric TGV trains popular in Europe, Florida will look for $1 billion from the private sector, which will operate the line. The Florida High Speed Rail Authority predicts the line would be profitable: even with one-way fares of less than $20, say its studies, HSR would generate up to $42 million a year from an annual ridership...
...many opponents see it as financial quicksand, certain the Orlando-Tampa high-speed line will end up costing much more than $2.5 billion. Still, free billions from Washington during a crippling recession are hard to pass up. Florida's bullet, as a result, may well be a train that's already left the station...