Will Florida Become A Paradise Lost?

[north miami]

By plan of action,we will weather Rick Scott as if a storm of historic proportions.Modern style.

FTU Abel Harding notes a certain Scott off step pause,the eyewall now not so well defined so to speak.Hurricane Scott facing conditions not favorable to strengthening.

The hard right GOP overstepped it's bounds some time ago, attacking as "extremist" persons and interests that have been in fact core GOP constituency representing legitimate,valuable interests and outlook.

In fact,Scott may actually be learning a thing or two..............

I bet there is some fascinating insight on the recent DOT head resignation...........

[yapp1850]

if rick scott approve sunrail if sunrail is expanded to tampa should it be a 2 trains with a Transfer station in lakeland or 1 train all way to tampa union station

[Ocklawaha]

Neither Yapp, there should be hourly service between Deland and St. Petersburg as soon as the Positive Train Control and/or second, third or fourth mainline is installed. Note once the third mainline is up and running, all talk about trains down the middle of I-4 will cease.

If I were asked to create the schedules, I'd look at the travel times from the various communities/counties. For example Volusia and Polk are no doubt chock full of people who leave leaving or arriving a full hour ahead of folks in Orange or Hillsborough. So I'd create a floating local schedule, where we'd survey to discover when the Volusia and Polk people are moving, and during those hours EVERY TRAIN would stop in EVERY STATION in those two counties. As the clock got closer to 8am or 9/10am then the closer in counties would enjoy the full service stops and places like Polk and Volusia would revert back to the major station stops only. Thus every station on the route would have it's hours of special "non-stop"  express train service, both in the morning and evening rush.

If Disney/Universal/Sea World/Wet-n-Wild etc. really want door to door service then I'd push for one of two things, a private public partnership with Disney to extend the Monorail over the identical route of the hair brained High Speed Rail, between the theme park, convention center and OIA. The other possibility could also involve a theme park, or it could be done independently and that would be to create a LIGHT RAIL line from the theme parks to Amtrak. Either of these mass transit partnerships would set the stage for Amtrak corridor service and/or HrSR.

My crystal ball? yeah, it's gonna happen, sooner or later this state will wake up and realize we can't pave ourselves out of every economic downturn. Rail alone offers us a low cost freeway that never needs widening.

OCKLAWAHA

[blandman]

I know very little about HSR and the pros/cons of the proposed Orlando-Tampa line (excepts what I've read on this forum), but am probably one of the "hypnotized" lemmings waiting in line to jump.  I neither live nor vote in Florida, so it doesn't really matter what I think about the line, but my question has more to do with the traditional arguments for and against HSR: Why is it typically framed as a time and money tradeoff exclusively?  This type of argument assumes we're all perfectly rational (i.e., we'd always weigh the cost and time involved in each mode and choose the best), which is absolutely not the case.  People don't always choose the cheapest or fastest way to commute to work or travel on vacation.  The problem with most places in this country is that we rarely have a choice.  In London, many people pay 4GBP to take the tube or 1GBP to take the bus somewhere they could get to faster and cheaper by walking (e.g., Marble Arch to Baker Street).  I paid 4.5GBP and commuted 1hr and 5min each way (40 min tube, 25 min walk) to work for 2 years, even though I had a car and it would have been cheaper (though pricey, fuel was certainly not 9GBP/day) and faster (40-45mins) to drive.  The factors I valued most? Avoiding the worry of getting stuck in traffic, the hassle of dealing w/ other drivers in a rush, the (useable) time I had to myself on the train, and the guilt I avoided when I was too lazy to workout b/c I'd already walked 40-50 min each day.  People tend to underweight the "intangibles" associated with non-auto commuting/traveling and overweight the cost/time argument, which isn't really all that surprising, b/c there are not many places you can do it on this side of the Atlantic.  Obviously the ideal solution is to make all of the arguments favor rail!