While Citrus County awaits the presentation of the Suncoast Parkway's proposed alignment, scheduled for disclosure in mid July, it is important to scrutinize the work already done by the consultants for the state Turnpike Enterprise.
Take, for example, the Community Profile Survey presented last year. It is now apparent , that no expert is going to step forward to analyze the document. I am no expert, and I have some experience reviewing commissioned surveys.
Because of my concern about this toll road, I read the survey (available at the Suncoast Parkway 2 web site). here are some of my concerns and observations.
Normally, a company paying for survey gets more information than the Center for Urban Transportation Research gave the Florida Department of Transportation. this includes such things as a breakdown of how many calls were attempted, how many not reached, how many refused, how many terminated, and how many were not eligible.
The calls were randomly generated and anonymous, but we should be given the breakdown by telephone exchange. Because the more obvious impacts of the proposed toll road are localized to the western half of the county, it is significant to know how many calls were made in each phone exchange. The time of day should be noted also. Calls during working hours would exclude most working people.
A company buying a survey usually gets the script that the callers use. This script is important because subtle changes affect the response. If five responses are read, the people responding are more likely to choose the middle or third response.
CUTR's survey sometimes indicates responses were read to the person being interviewed and sometimes it doesn't. Nowhere does the survey or executive summary even hint that many people were not asked all the questions. That is important for establishing the reliability of the information.
There where 29 questions. The first four established age, gender, length of residency, and the date they moved to Citrus County. That leaves 25 questions dealing with opinion, but at least 112 people were not asked 10 of those. They were only asked 15 questions. There must have been some instruction to the interviewer, but CUTR does not present it.
The people making the calls , use a code book that is like a menu. They choose what is supposed to be the closest matching response from a code book. For instance, the Citrus County survey tells us 61 people admitted to knowing nothing about the project, yet they were asked the next 10 questions. however, the 112 who responded that they had not heard of the project were not asked those 10 questions. The distinction seems capricious. that is one reason code books are usually supplied to the company buying the survey service.
Reading the conclusions drawn by CUTR, I sense an underlying bias. CUTR is funded in large part by money from FDOT. The U.S. Department of Transportation is matching the FDOT contributions dollar for dollar for CUTR's new National Center for Transportation Research (NCTR) organization. The FDOT is providing three senior members of its management staff to serve on NCTR's advisory board to shape its future programs. It is no surprise that individuals whose likelihood is derived in part from the FDOT through funding of CUTR would lead toward pleasing their benefactor.
One of the stated purposes of the survey is to show awareness of the project within the county. One question asks how much the respondent think he or she knows about the project. The interpretation of the responses should be that 85 percent of those contacted knew little to nothing about the toll road. That represents 61 people who admittedly know nothing about it, 112 who had never heard of it, and 239 who admittedly know what little, and that neutral or ambivalent middle response of 282. That tells me that only 106 of the 800 gave positive indications that they knew anything about the project.
If it were my purpose to help create an awareness of this project, I would be failing. Why didn't CUTR mention that? It goes on and asks the respondent in effect, do you trust of the caller? If the survey instrument script was followed, the respondent was told the survey was done by the CUTR at the University of South Florida. Now the interviewer is asking the respondent how much he or she trusts the university. Is it any wonder that this category did the best, with only 42 percent admitting to having little or no trust in the survey taker?
Other agencies did not do as well with local government and business in a dead heat for last place with a trust level of 62 percent. IF it were you intent to build credibility, I would say you were doing a poor job of it.
What upset me the most was finding proof that the FDOT staff did not read the survey, but merely trusted their good friend CUTR.
The executive summary declares the survey supplies baseline attitudes. What for? Is another, or a series of surveys planned for comparison in Citrus County because that is what baseline means. Or was this survey done just to satisfy federal requirements with no follow up. If comparative surveys were made in Pasco and Hernando, where are they and how have perceptions there changed? Will follow up surveys change the way the FDOT works in the future? Has the FDOT ever changed its process one iota due to any follow-up surveys?
The survey has omissions and errors that make it appear less credible than one would expect from a document costing so much and claiming to prove something. The number of questions appears to be 29, but after analyzing the responses it is apparent that many were asked as few as 15. This calls the reliability into question.
CUTR would do better to advise the FDOT that by opening up rural counties to unconfined sprawl, they create the very dependence on automobiles that CUTR is trying to alleviate. Many of those alternatives require population density, but toll roads, such as the Suncoast Parkway 2, leak population out over the countryside, leaving public transit to those captive, urban rider who cannot afford a private car for a one hour commute into the city.
While it is fair for the FDOT to fund a source of transportation engineers, opinion surveys should be done by those not funded so steadfastly and with such largess that by public entity. It would go a long way toward gaining credibility by putting the next survey out to competitive bid.
This community profile should not be used to mislead the public or the FDOT just because the FDOT wants something to be true. The people of Florida deserve better.
-- Kathy Faye Chetoka and her husband, Martin, have been Homosassa Springs residents since 1996. An 18-year city of Clearwater employee, she commutes to work on U.S. 19. Guest columnists write their own views on subjects they choose, which do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.