Last month, hundreds of concerned Tampa residents pleaded for the Hillsborough County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) to reject the Florida Department of Transportation’s plans to expand I-275 by adding toll lanes that would cut through part of the city.
Despite their pleas, only one MPO member (Guido Maniscalco) sided with the public.
The multi-billion plan would add tolled express lanes from the Gateway area of St. Petersburg to Bearss Avenue. The lanes would give extra capacity for cars whose drivers were willing to pay a variable toll, based on congestion.
Undaunted, a handful of those citizen activists returned to the MPO chambers on Tuesday, with a slightly different message – that the board members committed a dereliction in duty in passing the measure with little debate, some citizens said was a direct insult to them.
“I was at the last meeting,” said twentysomething Kyle Baker. “I think it was pretty clear that 400 plus residents were here to oppose it.” He referred to how major cities around the country have been removing major highways, not adding to them.
“I just feel expandng the highway isn’t really doing anything for my generation. It might be putting a band-aid on the current need, but what happens afterward?”
Mit Patel, CEO of Mit Computers and an activist against the plan, was apoplectic about how the August 4 MPO meeting went down, calling the lack of deliberation before the board voted 13-1 to support including the TBX project nothing short of a “crime to humanity” and an injustice against the entire community who came out in droves to oppose it.
He went on to call the multi-billion project “treasonous spending,” and that the board “should go to jail” for approving the plan. He then said he would offer to debate any MPO member on the merits of the TBX, but no one would appeared to take him up on his offer.
Chris Vela, the president of Sunshine Citizens, told MPO board members that he’s already seeing the Dept. of Transportation removing properties in Ybor City for the project (although in fact FDOT has for years been removing such properties) and pursuing land acquisitions. He said some recent new arrivals asked “How come your neighborhood is missing so many houses?”
He said that when FDOT holds their outreach meetings with the community they hold them after 5 p.m. so the working public can attend.
USF Philosophy Professor Douglas Jesseph was uncharitable in his critique of FDOT’s proposal: “I can say with complete confidence that any graduate student who submitted work of this caliber to a seminar on statistical methods would flunk the seminar, and be tossed out of the graduate program, and apparently go work for FDOT.”
He also skewed the MPO board members, saying that the report was so faulty that FDOT must have thought the board would be “too lazy to read the TBX proposal with any care, or too stupid to understand what they were reading.”
Construction is expected to last between 7 and 15 years.
Similar express lanes are already in place in cities like Los Angeles, Miami, Houston and Atlanta.
