No more toll roads to nowhere

There is never — ever — a good road to nowhere.

But the attempt to build the so-called Multi-use Corridors of Regional Economic Significance (M-CORES) project, a massive multi-billion-dollar toll-road boondoggle, is so poorly timed as to be nearly inconceivable. It should be stopped. Each year, Florida spends millions of dollars on highly trained traffic planners who help lawmakers and other policymakers decide when and where to build new roads. They look at traffic studies, population trends, economic analyses and the environmental impacts of new roads. This planning process is considered a “best management practice,” and it serves all of us very well.

But that’s not how the massive toll-road network known as M-CORES came about.

The vast M-CORES project was conjured up in the imagination of a former politician without regard to planning, budgeting or the quality of life of millions of Floridians. It takes Florida’s Turnpike and spiders it into myriad small towns, tearing through small communities and uprooting their livelihoods and lifestyles — destroying both in the process. And while the environmental impacts are still unknown, those impacts, like the assault on rural communities, will be irreversible.

That’s why we have filed House Bill 763 and Senate Bill 1030, which would repeal the M-CORES project.

M-CORES is a political job-killing boondoggle that will destroy what remains of dozens of Florida’s rural and farming communities. It will divert billions away from badly needed road projects — projects to help daily commuters who sit in endless traffic jams hoping that someone somewhere is working to find a solution — and will further strangle a state budget that is already gasping desperately for air.

The immediate and most pressing reason to put a stop to this massive betrayal of good planning concerns Florida’s current budget shortfall. Our state is looking at a job-destroying $3.7 billion deficit with an estimated $100 million being diverted from our state’s budget to pay for the first phase of these roads to nowhere — roads that, by the way, were not planned for and that nobody asked for!

That hundred million could be used to help local businesses, help put people back to work, help avoid cuts to our public schools, or cover basic health care needs for the children of working families. With persistently high unemployment, and as we struggle to fight a global pandemic, that hundred million could be spent better anywhere except on a massive, community-destroying system of roads that do nothing to address local traffic problems.

We want to be clear about one thing. We don’t oppose fixing Florida’s broken road system. We know Florida is behind in accommodating growth, and we have the gridlock to prove it. But we are also aware that Florida’s transportation planners have been working for decades on projects that will alleviate traffic jams, offer new routes for commuters and find solutions to the problems we now face.

The M-CORES toll road network was not in those plans and doesn’t even pretend to solve the traffic problems that everyday commuters now face. We’re not transportation planners, but building superhighways through towns like Inglis, Immokalee or Monticello will not solve the transportation and traffic problems we face today. It will, however, destroy the quality of life in those towns and do great harm to much of Florida’s rural landscape, and at a time when Florida can least afford any of that.

There is never a time to build a single road to nowhere, let alone a series of them. But now is the time to put the brakes on M-CORES, return the allocated dollars to the state and use the money to address the needs of everyday Floridians.

Democratic state Sen. Tina Polsky represents Senate District 29, which includes Parkland, Boca Raton, Highland Beach and Wellington. Democratic state Rep. Ben Diamond represents House District 68, which includes parts of St. Petersburg and Pinellas Park.