Issues

Transportation

Clark, Bee Ridge, University, Fruitville, U.S. 41, U.S. 301, and I-75 are words that invoke the nightmare of Sarasota - Traffic! Depending on the time of day they each bring to mind the largest concern of most citizens in the Sarasota-Manatee County area: traffic continues to worsen, and it appears that too little is being done to improve the situation.

In 2003, the Florida legislature established Florida’s Strategic Intermodal System (SIS). With the goal of guiding strategic investments linked to Florida’s future economy, SIS has funded large projects around Florida such as airports, spaceports, seaports, and rail and bus stations. However, as a consequence of the prioritization of fewer yet larger projects, traffic arteries in need of improvements were left without funding. The Sarasota/Manatee area is no exception. A promise was made that this new “system” would not affect the work program locally. Now, only three years after adoption, the Sarasota/Manatee Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) has pushed back, indefinitely, about $112 million worth of projects that had been scheduled for roads and bridges in Sarasota and Manatee counties. Important to note is that under SIS, Sarasota has only two roads eligible for funding I-75 and University Parkway, while Manatee County has state roads 70, I-75, and I- 275. Not included, and therefore left for counties and cities to fund, are important traffic arteries such as Clark, Bee Ridge, Fruitville, U.S. 41, and U.S. 301.

Transportation issues affect residents negatively—from a congested commute to work to an infuriating drive to the beach. Employees often cannot easily get to work, causing difficulties in recruitment and employee retention. This makes transportation a significant business issue. And, while the winter visitors come with an infusion of revenue to the region, they still add more congestion. If the roads were adequate, the frustration and the costs would ultimately be reduced.

A common suggestion to solve the problem is to increase impact fees, obtained through new real estate developments. However, it is actually illegal for the County to use impact fees for the improvement of existing roads. Road impact fees are in fact only allowed to fund building additional capacity caused by new development. The result is that if all new construction would stop tomorrow, no impact would be felt on road construction projects designed to solve existing problems.

In an effort to mitigate the situation, the Sarasota County Commission has raised the gas tax for road construction to its 5-cent limit, and imposed taxes on certain utilities. Manatee County is about to adopt the 5-cent tax. Despite these efforts, it is still inadequate to slow the deteriorating condition of road capacity.

Speaking on behalf of the members of the Argus Foundation, we believe that first, we need to call a transportation summit of the two-county area, and establish a unified legislative agenda. We need to consider whether the majority of the states’ $3.2 billion budget surplus should be applied to transportation needs of counties and how the money should be distributed. One solution is to base allotted money on a gas tax collections formula. Second, as a part of the summit, we need to establish a permanent two county partnership of diverse interests, to discuss not only how to deal with the state of Florida to get our fair share of transportation funding, but the possibility of toll roads and creative ways to work together to solve our regional issue.

In order to start the groundwork of forming necessary growth solutions for the future of our community, we need to create dialogue. The quarterly meeting of the Argus Foundation, Meet the Minds, was established to provide a forum for such public discussion. By engaging our business community, residents, tourism representatives, elected officials, and government staff in an exchange of ideas about our future, our goal is to lay the foundation for a solution to the transportation issues, leading to improved quality of life for future Sarasota/Manatee generations to come.

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