Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Transportation tax plan revs up
Broward residents and shoppers have been paying higher sales taxes since Jan. 1 to support county transportation projects — and the pennies are starting to add up. Voters approved the 17% sales-tax jump in November, raising the tax from 6% to 7% on most purchases. Here’s a look at what that means for 2019, by the numbers.
$59.6 million
The approved transportation sales tax budget for 2019 is $59.6 million. That’s a small fraction of the $15.6 billion expected to be raised over the 30-year life of the tax.
Figuring out which work will be done first and getting organized are the focus for this year.
6.9 miles of fiber optics
Fiber optics will help synchronize traffic lights throughout the county, reducing the time it takes drivers to cross the county.
Mark Plass, district traffic operations engineer for the Florida Department of Transportation, said the average Broward commuter encounters about 50 intersections with traffic signals each day. The increased use of fiber optics is allowing traffic managers to do their job more effectively for Broward drivers, he said.
This year’s plan calls for installing fiber optics along Pine Island Road between Broward and Oakland Park boulevards. There will also be cables installed on Sunrise Boulevard from Flamingo Road west to Northwest 136th Avenue, and on Northwest 136th Avenue from Sunrise Boulevard northeast to Flamingo Road.
The work will be part of $5.5 million to be spent on road projects. The other projects include the installation of three new traffic light mast arms. Safety zones will be improved at four elementary schools: Bayview, Charles Drew, Maplewood and Morrow.
133 new hires
Workers are needed to get things going: engineers and traffic technicians to plot out road improvements; bus operators to handle increased routes; administrators to oversee the stepped-up operations; and some people with big ideas to figure out ways of using new technology to make life better for commuters.
Most of the new positions will work behind a wheel, with the county planning to hire 97 bus drivers.
The county is also creating a three-person innovation staff — with the highly technical positions of mobility planner, transportation modeler and Geographic Information Systems program project coordinator — to come up with new solutions for traffic and transit problems.
To begin preparations for projects designed to improve traffic flow, 14 traffic engineers and traffic signal technicians are being hired.
193 transit vehicles
The county will be on a buying binge to meet future transit needs.
“Our fleet is old and is certainly too small,” Broward Transportation Director Chris Walton said. “We’re trying to cover too much area with too few buses.”
This year, the department will purchase almost 300 new transit vehicles. Of those, sales tax dollars will be used to pay for 65 buses and 146 TOPS paratransit vans. Eighty-seven additional buses, including five electric ones, will be covered by federal grants. Buses are the biggest portion of this year’s transportation tax budget. The buses will cost $39 million, and the paratransit vans will cost $7 million.
13 bus route improvements
The 2019 goal is a 10% increase in the hours buses run in the county.
“We haven’t had any real service increases in about the last six or seven years, so to have a 10% increase is significant,” Walton said. “There are geographic gaps in the county that we no longer cover or cover very sparsely.”
The county is reinstating a previously eliminated Hollywood run, Route 8, with service from Young Circle to Pembroke Lakes Mall via Taft Street. Weekend service will be restored to Route 88, which runs from the West Regional Terminal to Holmberg Road using Pine Island Road and Coral Springs Drive. Three other routes, which had been reduced to rush-hour schedules, will see early morning, midday and latenight service restored.
Overall, officials say those changes and increased service on other routes will result in a 121,000 extra hours of bus service annually.