[BTinSF]

March 22, 2010
Stimulus Plan for Rail Line Shows System of Weak Links
By MICHAEL COOPER

TAMPA — The drive from Orlando to Tampa takes only 90 minutes or so. Despite the short distance, the Obama administration awarded Florida $1.25 billion in stimulus money to link the cities with a fast train to help kick off its efforts to bring high-speed rail service to the United States.

The Florida train would indeed be high speed — as fast as 168 miles per hour. But because the trains would make five stops along the 84-mile route, the new service would shave only about half an hour off the trip.

Time-pressed passengers may also find themselves frustrated at the end of their trip. Neither city is known for great public transportation, so travelers may discover that they have taken a fast train to a slow bus.

Proponents of high-speed rail worry that the new line, which is scheduled to be up and running in 2015, might hurt rather than help their cause, if it comes to be seen as little more than an expensive way to whisk tourists from Orlando International Airport to Walt Disney World, which is slated to get its own stop.

Even Representative John L. Mica, a Republican whose district in northeast Florida stops about 20 miles short of the proposed line, has questioned whether his state was the best choice to receive some of the $8 billion that was set aside in the stimulus act for high-speed rail . . . .

Tourists who try to use public transportation, rather than renting a car, may find themselves seeing sights they would rather avoid and missing some they would like to see. As the Frommer’s travel guide to Tampa advises, “Like most other Florida destinations, it’s virtually impossible to see Tampa’s major sights and enjoy its best restaurants without a car.”

A couple of tourists from Chilliwack, British Columbia — Allana Strickland and her teenage daughter, Sarah McKenzie — learned this firsthand recently. When they took the public bus from Tampa to the Salvador Dali Museum in nearby St. Petersburg, a major draw in the region, they found themselves on a journey that lasted more than two and half hours to go less than 20 miles . . . .

. . . when America 2050, a planning group, ranked potential routes last year in a report called “Where High Speed Rail Works Best,” the Tampa to Orlando route did not even make the cut, because the group found that cities should be at least 100 miles apart to capture riders.

The planned route from Tampa through Orlando to Miami did make the list, though: it was ranked 100th among potential routes in the United States . . . .

In the short term, experts predict that up to a third of the train’s ridership would be for the 19-mile trip between the Orlando airport and Walt Disney World, which has agreed to donate land for a stop . . . .

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/23/us/23train.htm