By: THOMAS EGAN
In the past year, Florida leaders have taken a step towards efficient travel by passing a plan for a high-speed railway linking Orlando, Tampa and Miami.
Costing approximately $2.6 billion, Sunrail will create 11,000 much-needed jobs in construction and ease congestion along the highways.
The federal government is funding $2 billion of the total, therefore it will not be a burden to Florida’s economy. It would be an unwise decision to let this opportunity pass by.
What might be seen as a waste of money by people opposed to the project is actually an economical, innovative and green use of government resources.
Mass transit systems are much more efficient than our current system, which is a network of roads that take up valuable space (streets, highways, bridges and overpasses take up as much as one third of the available land in some urban areas). For instance, a subway system that runs on two tracks (36 ft wide) can transport 80,000 passengers per hour. Compared to that, an 8-lane freeway (125 wide) can only transport 20,000 passengers per hour.
The cost of operating an inner-city bus line is about two cents per vehicle mile, one tenth the average for a car.
Mass transit also reduces air pollution and gasoline consumption, which is becoming increasingly important because of the rising cost of oil extraction. A single bus that caries 80 people uses only slightly more fuel than a single car, yet it carries more people. Therefore, air pollution per passenger is less. Other countries are changing their infrastructures with this in mind.
China has plans to open 42 high-speed rails by 2012. South Africa has already started planning a $30 billion project to build a high-speed rail system between Johannesburg and Durban, and Europe and Japan have had successful rail systems for years.
The world is changing. If America doesn’t change with it, we will end up like the great civilizations in history books that couldn’t keep up with the ever-evolving, changing and growing world. Eventually this country will be overwhelmed by more new, more modern and more advanced civilizations.
Sunrail will begin construction in 2012, and start carrying passengers in the summer of 2013.
This might not, however, be the case if disagreements over liability between Sunrail executives and the company, CSX, that owns the tracks it will run on aren’t solved soon. If the project is delayed for too long, Central Florida residents won’t have the option of riding the train anywhere close to the summer of 2013, the latest that it is expected to be completed. On top of that, the workers getting jobs through the construction will have to wait longer than expected, and longer than they can afford.
All the reasons Sunrail is being pushed forward could be jeopardized because of the executives inability to solve their squabbles over liability, which would hurt Florida citizens.
Even with the problems facing Sunrail, it still represents a bright future for Floridians who look for eco-friendly alternatives to driving their cars.