OK we have a plan to get some Saturday SunRail service, but we need YOUR help.
Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings proposed increasing the county sales tax by a penny to help pay for transportation improvements – including expanding SunRail service.
We strongly support his goal, but we know persuading voters to increase a tax will not be easy. It never is.
Even though SunRail drastically improved its ridership during the past year – some trains are standing-room-only, there remain, residents, who view SunRail as a boondoggle because it doesn’t run on the weekends or late at night.
SunRail was created as a commuter service – Monday to Friday mostly bankers’ hours – and it was funded as such by the Florida Department of Transportation, which is footing much of the bill.
Regular readers of this blog know that there is no transit system that is supported mostly by the farebox. Tax dollars are required to keep public transit running, the same way those dollars pay for fire, police and other essential services.
The state dollars for SunRail end next year, which adds some urgency to Mayor Demings’ penny-tax proposal.
So how do you encourage people – especially the doubters – to support the tax.
Show them what’s in it for them.
Here’s where it gets good!
What if enough money could be raised to run SunRail one Saturday every month from now until November when we expect the tax proposal will be on the ballot?
It costs about $90,000 to pay for a regular full day of SunRail service – 40 trains from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m.
But do we really need 40 SunRail trains on a Saturday?
A couple of years ago SunRail and some public-private partners funded service on a few Saturdays. It cost about $20,000, per Saturday.
So how much Saturday SunRail service can $20,000 buy today?
We envision a couple of early-morning Saturday trains to support caregivers at the hospitals on the SunRail corridor and airport workers (many people in Central Florida do not have a traditional Monday to Friday work schedule).
Then go to a more relaxed late morning and afternoon schedule for folks headed to farmers’ markets, museums, movies and such and then wrap it up with a few night trains.
OK, so here’s where it gets dicey – how to pay for this?
Together there are 8 stations serving Orange County and Orlando, so we need to appeal to those governments to help bankroll this effort. Winter Park is the most popular destination for leisure riders, so they should put some skin in the game – as they have in the past.
We know Kissimmee is not in Orange County, but we also know downtown Kissimmee merchants would benefit if the train service was available on a Saturday. So, it would be nice if Kissimmee chipped in. The same goes for merchants in Seminole County’s historic downtown Sanford.
Imagine everything we could do if SunRail service was available on the first Saturday of every month. That seems like a reasonable way to get more people excited about supporting SunRail and the transportation tax.
So Dear Reader, here’s where you come in:
Take a moment and send an email to the mayors asking them to support this plan.
See you on The Rail!
