It’s gonna be, I think the longest or one of the longest all-electric BRTs in the United States. Instead, we took a very politically unpopular decision to build a world class BRT system. So we had the opportunity to basically mislead our residents and say, "We’re gonna vote for a train, we’re gonna submit to the federal government, five years later they’re gonna reject this project." Because the ridership was so low and the cost-benefit was so outta whack, they would never have funded it. We could have voted for a train, which we knew FTA would never fund. I mean this was not like, "We might get a train." This is like, "You’re getting a train."
And they said we’re gonna bring you a train. They certainly don’t understand the rating process. They probably wouldn’t even know what the letters FTA stand for. But these are the same elected officials that never bothered to understand the process. And for years elected officials had told them they were gonna get a train. There must have been something that kinda popped out at you.Įileen Higgins: Actually the hardest part about this project is the disappointment of some of our residents. Jeff Wood: What’s surprised you most about the process for the South Dade Busway? I’m sure that there’s been a number of things that have popped up that surprised you or, or you were interested in finding out because it’s a different project than any other project that Miami-Dade has done before. Click here for a full, unedited transcript. The text of a portion of the interview is available below. We chat with Miami-Dade County Commissioner Eileen Higgins about the South Dade Busway, the importance of FTA ratings in getting projects built, and why she thinks it’s important as an elected official to ride transit. This week on the podcast we are back at last fall's Rail~Volution conference.
0 kommentar(er)
