Miami — Broward Tax Vote

Rail Transit Online, July 2006

Voters in Broward County, just north of Miami-Dade County, will decide in November whether to raise their sales tax by one percent for 30 years to fund public transit.  The measure was placed on the ballot by a 5-4 vote of the County Commission.  It would fund a 23-year, $12.6-billion program to build a regional light rail system and a streetcar line in downtown Fort Lauderdale.  There would also be commuter rail service along the Florida East Coast Railroad, a bus rapid transit network and a near-doubling in the size of the bus fleet.  LRT lines would be built along major transportation corridors with branches to downtown Fort Lauderdale and Sawgrass Mills in Sunrise.  The proposal calls for light rail to be completed by 2015 but work on commuter rail wouldn’t start until 2018.  “If we do nothing, we're going to create more gridlock, more problems…and pretty much stagnate our whole economy,” said Broward County Mayor Ben Graber.  “If you're going to have a successful county, you need to move people around it easily.”