$33M later, The Wave is dead; next option sought

Fort Lauderdale’s Wave streetcar project is dead.

The state snuffed out the last flicker of hope Thursday for the proposed 2.8-mile Wave downtown rail line when it rejected the most recent construction bids because the prices were too high.

The lower bid for the $195.3 million project would have pushed the cost at least $30 million higher, to about $226 million, for a streetcar system originally estimated to cost $142 million. Potential cost overruns during construction would have added even more.

Although the Wave is history, it is an expensive failure.

Not a single track was ever laid, yet project managers still spent $33.7 million

in federal, state and local tax dollars and assessments planning for the rail system, according to figures compiled through March 31 by Fort Lauderdale Auditor John Herbst. The final bill will be higher and does not include money spent by the city and its Downtown Development Authority to develop the project.

The Wave’s supporters, mostly from the business and development community, said it’s critical to find an alternative immediately.

“We’ve got to move forward and the alternative has got to be put in motion,” said Alan Hooper, chairman of the downtown authority, where the idea for the Wave system first emerged more than 14 years ago. He said traffic will only get worse as new hotel, apartment and condo towers fill up downtown.

“If you feel like the traffic is an issue today,” Hooper said, “it’s going to be a bigger issue in the next two to three years.”

Critics complained the Wave was never designed to relieve traffic but was intended to attract development. The streetcars were to run in a lane of traffic, along with other vehicles.

Denny O’Shea, a downtown authority member, said the board shouldn’t have to apologize for pushing the Wave as a system expected to do more to spur development than ease traffic concerns.

“Like most of us I went to bed angry and I woke up disappointed, and then I remembered what our real mission is,” O’Shea said. “… I don’t think we should be damned for trying to promote development. That’s actually what we’ve been empowered to do.”

Members of the state selection committee that rejected the bids took only a few minutes to do their work, acknowledging the recent votes of the city and county commissions to back out of the Wave project.

“It is an unfortunate result, but I’m going to have to concur,” said Stacy Miller, a committee member and acting district secretary for the Florida Department of Transportation.

Broward Transportation Director Chris Walton, the county’s representative on the committee, said he’s confident the Wave setback won’t hurt future cooperation on other transportation efforts.

“There’s still a lot of transportation challenges that remain in this county,” Walton said. “I think there are bigger and better things in our future for us to work on.”

The state was willing to follow the lead of the city and county because it has no liability to repay any of the expended federal funds, Miller said. The federal funds were expended by the Wave’s previous lead partner, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, she said. The state transportation department took over management of the project in 2016.

Of the spent money, $9.4 million came from the federal government, $11.1 million from the state and $8.7 million from the city and its downtown authority, and $4.2 million from the regional transportation authority. Broward’s spent share, according to Herbst, is only about $550,000 so far.

Officials have not determined yet how much, if any, of the federal money spent on the project will have to be repaid, and how any repayments would be split.

Fort Lauderdale may also face some additional costs. It would have to come up with about $845,000 that was spent to repay its own redevelopment agency, and it or the downtown authority would have to cover about $955,000 that has been spent from assessments to downtown property owners.

The rest of the $7.5 million taken from the redevelopment agency and the $9.5 million collected from downtown property owners is sitting unused, but when it is returned, the agency and the property owners will also have to be paid interest on the money that was given.

The federal government’s total commitment to the project was for $82.7 million. City officials are hoping that some of the unused $73.3 million in grants can be repurposed for a different transportation system, like specialty buses with sleek designs and hidden wheels, for the downtown.