TALLAHASSEE -- the Suncoast Parkway ends abruptly just south of the Hernando-Citrus County line in sand hills dotted with scrub pine and palmetto.
tangled AMEX hide scrub jays, indigo snakes , and go for tortoises. This is the real Florida, environmentalists say, wild and opened. They wanted to stay that way.
developers and community leaders, on the other hand, look across the same horizon and see cheaply and an opportunity. They want the Florida Department of Transportation to extend the toll road north through rural Citrus County.
To do that, the Department Turnpike District must demonstrate there's enough demand to justify construction. That task might have proved difficult until the Florida Legislature intervened this spring.
After all, traffic on the current Suncoast Parkway from Tampa to U.S. 98 north of Brooksville lags behind projections. The Transportation Department probably will have to subsidize smaller-than-hoped-for upon payment with money from other, more profitable turnpikes.
But state lawmakers, in what environmentalists call a recipe for urban sprawl, found a way to build more toll roads with the little economic justification.
Of all the legislation this session, this is the dog," said Charles Lee of Audubon of Florida. "Development will metastasize."
Proponents, however, say the law simply enables Florida to respond more quickly to the transportation needs of a growing state.
"There were not any significant projects[the DOT] could build a fund with existing guidelines," said State Senator John Laurent, R-Bartow, who voted for the bill.
A Classic Debate
Developers and transportation planners say , Florida is growing whether environmentalists or anyone else likes it. New highways are needed to meet swelling command.
Environmentalists, however, fear the easier guidelines are a way to open cheap but scenic land to lucrative subdivisions, business parks and strip malls. They say developers need those highways to keep steady supply of customers rolling their way.
The new law rolls back, what was intended to serve as a litmus test for new turnpikes.
Previously, highway consultants had to show a toll road could repay 50 percent of the bonds issued to build the road within 5 years and 100 percent within 15 years. The Legislature lengthened to pay back requirements to 15 years and 22 years.
The turnpike district needed the changes because several existing toll roads, including Veterans Expressway in Hillsborough County, have failed to meet revenue requirements and traffic projections.
That begs the question: If the toll roads couldn't be justified under the old formula, should they be built at all?
The Legislature established the original economic provisions as a fire wall against turnpike reserves being siphoned off for nonessential projects.
Sierra Club lawyer Leslie Blackner says many of the district's projects, including the next phase of Suncoast Parkway, could not be built if the turnpike district had to show revenue projections that would pay 50 percent of the bond issue in 5 years.
For example, in a 1998 bond prospectus, consultants projected the current Suncoast Parkway would make $103.4 million during its first five years of operation -- well short of half the turnpikes cost of $350 million. And that doesn't include interest on the bonds.
Also the parkway won't have a full year's worth of revenue until October, early figures show ridership lags behind projections.
"The jig's up," Blackner said. "They know it, so they changed the rules."
Focus: Moving People
Turnpike director James Ely says the economic test requirements are not needed because the overall turnpike system is financially sound. When the Legislature for established the financial feasibility tests in the 1980s, he says, it was to evaluate nine projects the district was considering.
"As far as I know, no other Turnpike or toll entity has this test," Ely said.
Besides, he says, potential projects should be evaluated on their ability to shorten travel time, decreased accidents and reduce the need to widen and extend existing roads using tax dollars.
The argument that toll roads decrease the need to widen and extend existing roads may bring hollow in the Tampa Bay area. Hillsborough County officials, for example, have been forced to consider asking residents for a tax increase to pay for a projected $801 million in road improvements over the next 23 years.
"Why aren't we adding lanes in congested areas like Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando and Miami?" Lee asked.
Eli says, the DOT wanted the economic tests eliminated entirely. but South Florida legislators balked and nearly passed an amendment that would have left the financing requirements as they were.
They did not want to Florida's Turnpike, the 265-mile mainline running through 11 counties in South Central Florida, used to supplement unprofitable roads. The sides compromised by lengthening the payback period.
Ely, who is in his 13th year as director, says the district always has used establish turnpikes to subsidize less profitable toll roads until their traffic volume increases.
"The system itself underwrites the cost of the project," he said.
Changing Expectations
Critics say the turnpike has manipulated numbers for years to justify unneeded roads that proved more useful to the developers than commuters.
Records show that you are as consultants Inc., accompanies a well-connected shares turnpike district office space in Ocoee, has consistently missed projections on toll roads.
Perhaps the most notorious example of the URS projection-gone-wrong was the Garcon Point Bridge near Pensacola. It is also known as Bo's Bridge , because its biggest champion was Bolley "Bo" Johnson , a former Democratic Speaker of the Florida House.
Even though the bridge was built a parallel to another -- free -- bridge, URS estimated in 1992 that 6,500 cars would cross it daily, paying what is now a $2.50 toll. That projection was off by about 3,000 cars a day, and the bonds used to finance the debacle have been downgraded several times.
In 1995, URS was hired to do the final economic study for Suncoast Parkway. the consultant project at the toll road with gross $19.7 million during 2002. Three years later in the bond prospectus, however, the Company changed the first year forecast to $14.9 million.
Turnpike officials say that differences in the two projections are "remarkably similar" given that three years had passed. They also attribute the lower revenue figures in the bond prospectus to a 1997 legislative direction that and Sunpass electronic toll card holders get a 10 percent discount
Turnpike officials, in written responses to questions from the Tampa Tribune, say projecting Highway traffic and revenues is a relatively new field that came into being in the 1990s. One reason URS overestimated revenues, officials say, is consultants relied on land use and development forecasts provided by local planning authorities.
"URS now obtains independent assessments of future land use that conservatively estimated future growth," officials wrote.
Recipe For Sprawl?
Environmentalists say road building is highly political and that campaign contributors drive many highway decisions. Why else, they ask, would the Legislature want to unleash the highway department to push turnpikes into sparsely populated world areas?
"What this road building machine is going to do is suck toll revenues out of South Florida and deliver every land speculator's dream in rural north Florida," said Lee of Audubon.
Carl Gibilaro, project manager for Suncoast Parkway two, says the Turnpike District is not interested in spurring development. He points out much of delay and Citrus County already is planted and sold.
"We're just trying to be one step ahead" of growth, he said.
The Transportation Department doesn't have enough money to maintain state highways and build new roads, Gibilaro says. Toll roads are a way to improve the transportation system without using tax dollars.
However, a different agenda emerges in the 1998 bond prospectus, explaining why veterans Expressway in Tampa , and Seminole Expressway in the Orlando area failed to meet traffic projections.
The document says the economic task used on the 2 tollroads "did not give sufficient time for planned development around the projects to occur , and therefore traffic on the projects did not have sufficient time to increase to anticipated levels.
Other turnpike documents referred to "lag time" in development around the new poll wrote, resulting in lower than projected traffic volumes.
To environmentalists, this refutes turnpike officials insistence that their first priority is moving traffic.
Lee says the only hope of corralling what he terms "potentially voracious" road building is guidance from other state agencies including the Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Community Affairs.
"The principle of ridership", he said, "is no longer going to have any meaningful effect on whether those roads are built are not."
Mike Salinero can be reached at (850) 222-8382.