BROWARD BUILT A BONFIRE AND CALLED IT TRANSIT
Political pros know the drill: if you have bad news, release it on a Friday. If you have a total disaster on your hands, release it right before Christmas. That's exactly what happened when Broward County dropped an animated video about the Port-to-Airport Connector on YouTube, just as residents were checking out for the year.
To see why this is destined to be a billion-dollar failure, you just need to watch the video.
County officials will tell you this project is transformational. Efficient. Forward-looking. They may even imply that it's good for the environment, because transit always is.
But here's the problem. Even if this train ran on fairy dust and unicorn tears, even if it had zero emissions, this billion-dollar boondoggle would still be the biggest lump of coal ever shoved into Broward taxpayers' stockings.
This light rail, which is currently sucking up half the penny tax funds, isn't designed for the residents paying the tax. It isn't even designed well for the tourists it's supposed to serve.
The video proudly highlights the proposed route for Phase One. It's a 3.5-mile light rail from the airport to the seaport. But pay attention to where it stops.
At the 0:55 mark, the narrator cheerfully announces, "The port administration building comes into view with the first potential station site."
Imagine a family of four or a senior couple, dragging cruise luggage through the Florida heat, realizing our billion-and-a-half-dollar-and-rising "connector" dropped them a 10- to 15-minute walk from their ship.
We are spending $1.55 billion to build a train that drops people off at the bureaucratic headquarters of the Port. Who is traveling from the airport to Port HQ? A handful of county staff? A few lobbyists?
Meanwhile, the actual economic engines of the port - the cruise terminals - are scattered in the distance. The video pans over them like they are scenic background details. Terminals 19, 29, and 26 appear "nearby," but in reality, four of the major terminals are nearly half a mile away from the line.
They won't take this train. They'll take an Uber. Still skipping over our local businesses, while the taxpayers also foot the bill for an empty train.
A Monument to Waste
Even the county's own numbers admit this is a ghost train. Ridership projections are in the low hundreds to maybe the low thousands a day. This is a rail line you could service with a couple of high-end shuttle buses.
Compare this to Miami-Dade. Their Metrorail Northeast Corridor covers 13.5 miles for about $927 million, roughly $69 million a mile, and will serve more than 11,000 daily riders.
Broward's "Connector" runs 3.5 miles and sits almost entirely on county-owned property. No complicated land acquisitions. No relocations. This should be the cheapest stretch of track in Florida history. Instead, the price keeps climbing while the utility keeps dropping.
The airport rail sat around $1.25 billion not long ago. Now, the price tag has floated past $1.5 billion. Roughly $446 million a mile. It still does not include a maintenance facility. So far that's more than SIX times Miami's cost, and it doesn't take a genius to see we're going to also need a maintenance facility.
We are paying Ferrari prices for a golf cart that doesn't even take you to the clubhouse.
Strictly compliance review.
How does a project like this survive? Because the watchdog is toothless. The Penny Tax Oversight Committee, the body voters thought would protect their money, has been boxed in by county attorneys.
Their authority is limited to checking a box: Does this qualify as transportation?
If staff says "Yes," the committee can't question the math. It's strictly compliance review.
Every month the Oversight Committee sits through a fresh slide deck, listens to cheerful updates, and watches billion-dollar figures drift higher. They have the same view the public has and none of the power the public assumes they have.
They can't ask why we're building a train to the Port Admin building. They can't push back when a mile of rail suddenly costs as much as a hospital wing. They are not allowed to evaluate whether a project makes sense, only whether it fits a definition.
The county calls it transparency, but it's just a "Potemkin Committee." A cardboard cutout of oversight designed to make the public feel safe while the treasury is being raided, one bad project at a time.
There's no referee. No brake pedal. No one in the room with authority or permission to say a simple and necessary word: NO.
The penny tax was supposed to fix traffic. Smarter lights. A little mercy for people who spend half their week creeping along staring at someone else's bumper.
So, Broward County keeps building. Not transit. A bonfire. A bonfire of our money.
And the only thing moving fast in this county is the cash going up in smoke.
Watch the video. Look at the "station" at the administration building. And ask yourself: Is this what you voted for?