Reviewing the South Florida East Coast Corridor Study report -

Right now, I am about half way through the 150 plus page report. This is one of the foundations for implementing passenger transit service on the FEC (eastern tracks) through Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties. It's a rather technical report, at times, so as I go through it, I'll try to summarize the major points and findings. All in all, it is a good reminder that Lake Worth - all 40,000 more or less people that live in the city are a small part of larger urban region that faces many similarities and obstacles in the transportation of goods and people.

Lake Worth is not an island, nor should we pretend to be.

Growth for the region is showing increases - which reverses a recent trend of decline in population due to economic conditions - lack of jobs here and difficulty persons wishing to locate to this area have in selling their homes in Northeastern or Midwestern states. If this growth is going to happen, where is that growth best to take place? Laced throughout the report is the answer - in the older, established municipalities that grew up along the Florida East Coast (FEC) railroad to begin with. Much of our future as a region will depend upon us reaching back to our past in order to sustain our regional economy. If we really want to become a sustainable environment and conserve land that otherwise might be developed, it only makes sense to redevelop what has already been environmentally disturbed. It also makes sense to make an effort to reduce the distance between place of work and where you live. But, you have to create a land use pattern that supports this sort of redevelopment and reliance on transit.

Starting on page 34 of the report, we have the following text:

We are setting ourselves up to be one of the obstacles in the success of mass transit in our region. A three story height limitation near the FEC railroad tracks will do nothing to support transit and will not wean us from dependency on the automobile as a primary means of transportation. That's what ended up in our Comprehensive Plan.

The report lays out four alternatives (above) that range in financial and operational impacts. These are reviewed in the tables below. From left to right, they begin with buses providing linkages on existing roadways (US-1) to Tri-Rail, to buses actually using the FEC right-of-way with freight traffic, to self-contained diesel units (DMUs) to equipment that is like the present "push/pull" engines that provide Tri-Rail service. There are pluses and minuses to all of the various approaches, but this does a good job at laying out the alternatives. Let me know if you have questions.

The conclusions of the report will be the subject of the Public Hearing at the Kravis Center on September 14th.