Should We Kill SunRail? Your Votes & Your Opinions Please. (Jacksonville: employment, transfer)

[OrlFlaUsa]

Revived my thread months later to say that even though I had my doubts, I was starting to get really excited about SunRail. I have a good buddy who moved out to Deland and is walking distance to the future Deland station. So I started looking at much cheaper homes out that way and thought, you know what, SunRail is going to connect the exurbs with the city and allow people to live further out. I then began to think that it will also do the opposite which is creating higher density TOD along the line which will counter some of the unavoidable sprawl. I basically came to the final conclusion that people are going to move out that way no matter what, why not provide an incentive to get off our over burdened main highway. However, looks like SunRail's fate is the same as HSR's.

Scott being pushed to kill SunRail, too - St. Petersburg Times
Legislators to Gov. Scott: Quick, kill SunRail too! – Taking Names the Blog – Orlando Sentinel

[Crane's Rooster]

I know I've written alot on the topics of rail development in our state so I'm sure some of you may be getting sick of hearing me but let me give my personal reason. Some other long time State residents may know exactly what I'm talking about. Before moving to Central FL I grew up in the Fort Myers area of FL. At the time it was a sleepy gulf coast, almost rural community. Much of the area was undeveloped (untouched really) but it was some of the most beautiful natural environment you could ever see. In the years since my youth it has exploded in growth. Unfortunately the urban planning and management there was almost non existent. Many communities such as Lehigh Acres and Cape Coral, rather than implementing a comprehensive growth plan simply leveled entire swaths of the area to entice developers by basically eleminating the cost of clearing the land. Gone were the natural pine scrubs, the overall greenery that defined SWFL. Now when I return home it is sometime heartbreaking to see an area that was once prestine and almost heavenly, than in the background is a neighborhood that started but never developed or an abandoned condo project. I really don't want to see this happen to other areas of the State, particularly in the area I now call home. I think developing rail, commuter and HSR, will encourage smart growth. Communities will develop around the rail centers with all the amenities a good community needs. Now these resident will have the best of both worlds, living away from the draw backs of living in the city, but still have the conveniences of living in a densely populated central area. In the years that I lived in New England and took rail travel I always enjoyed taking the commuter rail from Boston to Providence. One of the things I found most interesting is you would go through stretches of beautiful New England woods and ponds and than pull into a quaint little town. After pulling out of the station you would repeat the same sequence multiple times until pulling into Providence. I hope that one day you can jump on the Sunrail or HSR and have the same type of experience. I personally don't want our region turning into NYC metro or LA, ironically enough encouraging mass transit and denser population centers seems to the key to avoiding that type of urban sprawl.

[Crane's Rooster]

Report: Scott set to OK SunRail | Orlando Business Journal

[sp2007]

Public transit is awesome. But is there a lot of ridership from Deltona and Kissimmee to downtown Orlando? Now if it went to the parks or the airport, that might make sense.

[Pete C]

Yes! Excellent news!! Though I would have preferred a more modern rail to be built from the ground-up, I guess we will take what we can get. The stops in Winter Park and Downtown should prove very popular, so I hope they change their tune and run it on weekends. At the very least they need to run it during Magic games.

The free downtown Lymmo service is also getting expanded and will reach out further in all directions. Once this gets up and running, hopefully they will look to build out rail lines tying I-drive, OIA, and UCF/East Orlando to downtown. At that point it will start to resemble a proper city mass-transit system.

[Crane's Rooster]

Originally Posted by sp2007

Public transit is awesome. But is there a lot of ridership from Deltona and Kissimmee to downtown Orlando? Now if it went to the parks or the airport, that might make sense.

This is a commuter rail intended for local commuters and workers, the high speed rail was planned to be more dependent on tourist traveling from the airport to I-Drive and Disney. Although downtown will be a key stop not every rider will necessarily be traveling there as their final destination. In addition to downtown the other stops that are major employment centers are Lake Mary, Florida Hospital, Orlando Regional Medical Center, and to a lesser extent Sanford and Altamonte Springs. Between the major stops YES there is a demand from the outlying areas. Many people choose to live in areas like Deltona and Kissimmee for the much more affordable housing. These areas are more traditional "bedroom communities" where people go to lay their heads at night but almost the entire community works outside of the city. Many of them are employed at places like FL hospital or at the corporate parks in Lake Mary. Anyone who commutes from over the Lake Monroe bridge in the mornings can tell you there is a huge number of commuters living in south Volusia who work closer to the core. The same can be said for Kissimmee/Osceola.

Additionally the biggest supporter of the rail are the 2 major hospitals. To simply call them hospitals is an understatement. They truly are campuses. Both ORMC and FL Hospital main campuses comprise of multiple hospitals and than many smaller doctors offices and medical facilities. ORMC for example runs all the way from Kaley ave to Lake Lucerne, they need a shuttle just to get the workers and patients to all the facilities. A large percentage of the ridership is also expected to be patients who can't easily drive to the hospitals such as the elderly or disabled.

[Wilshire81182]

I think the limited stops from around the ORMC area up to about Altamonte (at least to Winter Park) would have been beneficial and would help gauge overall usage of the system. I understand why the plans keep falling through, but the most devastating thing of all to me is where all the money went instead of to Florida. That money probably had to be used for similar projects but it is hard to see that many millions leaving Florida to go to states that already have existing mass transit infrastructure.

[Joke Insurance]

It has been approved.

[kyle19125]

Originally Posted by Crane's Rooster

This is a commuter rail intended for local commuters and workers, the high speed rail was planned to be more dependent on tourist traveling from the airport to I-Drive and Disney. Although downtown will be a key stop not every rider will necessarily be traveling there as their final destination. In addition to downtown the other stops that are major employment centers are Lake Mary, Florida Hospital, Orlando Regional Medical Center, and to a lesser extent Sanford and Altamonte Springs. Between the major stops YES there is a demand from the outlying areas. Many people choose to live in areas like Deltona and Kissimmee for the much more affordable housing. These areas are more traditional "bedroom communities" where people go to lay their heads at night but almost the entire community works outside of the city. Many of them are employed at places like FL hospital or at the corporate parks in Lake Mary. Anyone who commutes from over the Lake Monroe bridge in the mornings can tell you there is a huge number of commuters living in south Volusia who work closer to the core. The same can be said for Kissimmee/Osceola.

Additionally the biggest supporter of the rail are the 2 major hospitals. To simply call them hospitals is an understatement. They truly are campuses. Both ORMC and FL Hospital main campuses comprise of multiple hospitals and than many smaller doctors offices and medical facilities. ORMC for example runs all the way from Kaley ave to Lake Lucerne, they need a shuttle just to get the workers and patients to all the facilities. A large percentage of the ridership is also expected to be patients who can't easily drive to the hospitals such as the elderly or disabled.

Has there been any light shed as to what happens when commuters disembark at the various spots? It's great if your place of employment is situated near the station, but to broaden the scope of ridership some form of very frequent transit needs to be in place to run a loop through the area.

[totsuka]

I sometimes drive through downtown Orlando on the weekends and it is dead. Nothing. There is no reason to go down there and no reason to encourage people to go down there. This light rail system is a just another wasteful government spending project. The bus system in the Orlando area is a joke and that is where the money should have been applied.