Bills to Divert SunRail Funding Earmark Money to TBARTA and Adds New Bureaucracy

All state taxpayers were put on the hook to pay for SunRail's operating and maintenance costs for the first 7 years. Since SunRail ridership is so dismally low and farebox only covers 5% of its operating costs while state taxpayers are subsidizing 95%, thankfully the state funding of SunRail ends in 2021.

It's 2018 and the food fight over where those rail dollars will go has officially begun. 

Bills filed this legislative session diverts $60 million of state rail monies beginning in 2021, grows government by creating another transportation bureaucracy and provides earmarks for TBARTA and Miami-Dade County.

The original sponsor of the House bill is Rep. Avila from Miami-Dade but the champion sponsors of both bills in the State House and Senate are from Tampa Bay - Rep. Jamie Grant and Sen. Dana Young. However, no one seems to know the genesis of the original bill.

The bills are HB535 and SB1200. They earmark $25 million to Miami Dade County and $25 million to TBARTA  if there is a one for one local or private match - not including any federal funds. The earmarks have no sunset or end date so they must go into perpetuity.

HB535/SB1200 earmarks $25 million 
of state funding for TBARTA  

TBARTA was unnecessary when it was created in 2007 as a regional transportation authority. TBARTA is more unnecessary as another transit authority paid for on the backs of taxpayers. TBARTA was repurposed to a transit authority last year when transit ridership has been decreasing in Tampa Bay and nationwide, record auto sales is occurring as more people are buying cars and traditional transit is being disrupted. And taxpayers are already paying for their local transit agency. 

The Eye had numerous posts about the unscrupulous politics last year used by special interests and then powerful Sen. Jack Latvala to ram the TBARTA bill thru. Latvala resigned in December last year amid allegations of sexual harassment and the recommendation that a criminal investigation be conducted regarding the abusive use of his power. Perhaps that TBARTA bill forcing another transit agency on taxpayers should be reconsidered - not funded. 

HB535/SB1200 grows government by creating a new transportation bureaucracy, Alternative Transportation Authority, within FDOT. FDOT already includes their 7 Districts, the Turnpike enterprise, Transportation for the Disadvantaged and the Florida Rail Enterprise.

FDOT Org Chart w/new authority
(Click to enlarge)

"Alternative transportation systems" in the bills is defined as:

For purposes of this section, the term “alternative transportation system” means a system of infrastructure, appurtenances, and technology designed to move the greatest number of people in the least amount of time. The term includes, but is not limited to, autonomous vehicles as defined in s. 316.003 and transportation network companies as defined in s 627.748. The term does not include other traditional uses of a roadway system for conveyance.

Missing is cost-effectiveness, congestion relief, ability to more efficiently use our existing infrastructure or provide the ability to reduce travel times for the most amount of people. AV vehicles will use roadways like traditional vehicles today so the last sentence of the definition is not clear.

What is good in the bills is they repeal Subsection 5 of Statute 341.303 that funded rail projects out of the Florida Rail Enterprise. The Florida Rail Enterprise was established in 2009 when the Obama Admin was doling out the HSR debt dollars that Governor Scott thankfully rejected. (Actually voters/taxpayers rejected the bullet train in 2004.) 

Over and over again we find that once bureaucracies are created, it's almost impossible to get rid of them. HSR was rejected but the bureaucracy remains. Bureaucracies need sunset dates!

Unfortunately, these bills do not eliminate the Florida Rail Enterprise but re-divert money from it that has been paying for SunRail since 2014. The local municipalities in Central Florida, who still have no dedicated long term funding source for SunRail, must begin picking up their own tab beginning in fiscal year 2021-2022. 

So the food fight over what is being called "found" money has begun. It's not really "found" money because everyone knew the state funding of SunRail thankfully had a sunset date. 

Beginning in fiscal year 2021-2022 when the state stops paying to operate SunRail, these bills change where the funds for the Transportation Regional Incentive Program, TRIP, (who knew…) are allocated. $60 million of Florida Rail Enterprise money will be diverted earmarked as follows: $25 million dollars on a matching basis to TBARTA, $25 million to Miami-Dade County and $10 million that can be allocated throughout the state based on county requests.

Was TBARTA or FDOT consulted? One would assume the entities specifically impacted would have been. When we inquired to both FDOT and TBARTA, we were told they had not been engaged and did not know about the bills until they were filed. 

The only funding TBARTA requested this legislative session is a million dollars to create their Transit Development Plan as required by the State legislature. HB2451 was submitted by Rep. Joe Gruters for that specific appropriation this year.

Eligibility to receive TRIP funds requires partners that form a regional transportation area and requires those partners meet certain criteria to be eligible to receive those funds. Does the TRIP criteria still apply to the $60 million diverted from SunRail? If so, how can $25 million be earmarked to Miami-Dade or any funds go to a single county?

Bills HB535/SB1200, as currently written, are flawed. They create more bureaucracy, lack an end or sunset date, appear to duplicate some of what is already in place and have accountability issues. 

The nebulous term “Alternative” should not be used in the title of any transportation authority. If the intention is for innovation, then use such terminology as innovative, new technology, advanced technology, etc.

The Florida Rail Enterprise should be eliminated, not just re-divert its funding. Eliminate Statute sections 341.303(5) & (6). This entity appears to either be very inactive and/or not very transparent. There is no federal/state money for HSR, BrightLine HSR is a private enterprise and SunRail has its own Board of Directors.

Let's get rid of an unnecessary bureaucracy if a new one will be created. Novel idea!

The bills duplicate some of what is already in place today in Florida. FDOT already has staff working on innovative transportation solutions. FDOT and Turnpike are partners of SunTrax: http://www.suntraxfl.com. 

We already have Florida Statute 341.501 High-technology transportation systems; joint project agreement or assistance. That statute provides funding via FS 339.135 by FDOT for high tech transportation projects meeting specific criteria, including it must be implemented within 5 years and it is in the transportation improvement program of any MPO that is within the boundaries of where the project is located. 

Why aren't innovative transportation projects being funded via what has already been put in place?  

We need efficiencies in government not duplication that causes wasteful spending, confusion and convoluted processes. The path of least resistance in government is to add something new, regardless of what is already in place. 

The $60 million being diverted with these bills needs disciplined accountability, clear concise criteria for its use that can be measured, and have a sunset date. No state funding should be earmarked into perpetuity. 

State transportation grants must go thru a competitive process and awarded on merit not be earmarked. The monies awarded should not be used to leverage debt or be used to bail out any local or regional transportation/transit authority. All monies distributed must be used for project design and construction only and prohibited from being used for public outreach, advocacy, education or electioneering. 

The $60 million being diverted from rail comes from Statewide Documentary Stamps Tax revenue. The estimated future doc stamp revenues can be found here. It is a big pot of money that funds the Land Acquisition Trust Fund - the Florida Forever Amendment 1 passed by voters in 2014.

The top third of State Documentary Stamp revenues is lopped off for the Land Acquisition Trust Fund (Florida Forever). The balance, currently over a half billion dollars, goes to the State Treasury with $75 million to the General Fund and the remaining $470 million to the State Transportation Trust Fund. 

The State Transportation Trust Fund funds the TRIP program and Bills HB535/SB1200 will divert $60 million of TRIP funds to earmark $25 million to TBARTA, earmark $25 million to Miami-Dade County and $10 million available to any county in the state for supposedly innovative transportation projects.

TBARTA has no plan, very little staff, and they have not even created their transit development plan. They currently have no staff or skills to operate any major transit system. The $25 million earmarked to TBARTA cannot be used for the recently proposed regional Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project proposed by Jacobs Engineering because it is not innovative or uses new technology.

Earmarking state funding for TBARTA beginning in 2021-2022 today is the cart before the horse and into perpetuity is appalling. 

Eliminating the rail funding is good. But if the state legislature wants to create a new transportation bureaucracy, the hatches must be tightened down. If the state wants to divert rail dollars to innovative transportation, that should include all forms of innovative transportation not just transit.

These bills are flawed and the earmarks must be eliminated. Just because the SunRail earmark expires in 2021 does not mean those funds should simply get earmarked elsewhere and with no end date.  

What about considering getting rid of unnecessary bureaucracies and returning some of our hard earned money back to us?

Let's see bills to repeal TBARTA, eliminate the Florida Rail Enterprise and reduce the state Doc Stamp rate!

Transit Reality not Misguided Rhetoric Presents Opportunity

As we posted here, the latest $1.5 million Tampa Bay regional campaign for transit has begun.

Jacobs Engineering, awarded the $1.5 million work, presented the slide below as part of their response to get the campaign work. We can only assume that is their problem statement - they think the public is stupid.

Jacobs Engineering slide included in their RFP response

The re-education marching orders must have gone out. The Times reporters, columnists and editors and some other local media outlets all fell in line at the same time.

The Times began their recent piling on of HART with this article. The Times reporters, editors and columnists must have been colluding because they all piled on sounding the same false alarm that the sky is falling because we don't have costly rail/transit systems and we need them and must pay for them. (Search HART, transit on the Times website for all their recent articles.)

Time to reset the rhetoric of the Times doom and gloom alarms.

FDOT's TBX project must be implemented to add interstate capacity, fix the choke points and the Howard Frankland bridge. TBX creates a major Express bus transit corridor for commuters in Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. TBX is funded by our state and federal gas taxes we already pay and tolls by those who use the managed express lanes (no new taxes needed).

Express toll lanes are being built on the Veterans Expressway that will also provide another major Express bus transit corridor in the region.

Most likely, there will be autonomous buses using these express lanes before any costly rail system could ever be built out.

Autonomous bus 

The Times and others right here in Tampa Bay continue ignoring our own transportation think tank at USF, the Center for Urban Transportation Research (CUTR). Perhaps they could at least read CUTR's Journal of Public Transportation.

The Times did not mention TBARTA's regional van pool service. This van pool program is a cost-effective public-private partnership that serves commuters in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties.

TBARTA Regional Van Pool Service
(click to enlarge)

Ray Chiarmonte, Executive Director of TBARTA, did respond to the Times doom and gloom with his Op-Ed about TBARTA's vanpool.

HART had just completed their latest customer survey. The Eye attended the February 6, 2017 HART Board meeting where the survey results, found here, were presented and overall satisfaction from those who use HART's services is positive. Does the Times even know about HART's surveys?

Overall Satisfaction 
• The percent of customers who are very satisfied with HART’s service overall has continuously increased each Wave, reaching nearly 50% in Wave 4
. • Over 95% of customers in all Waves feel that service quality has improved or stayed the same over the past year.
Customer Service
 • The percent of customers who agree that HART is focused on customer service continued to increase in Wave 4
Availability
 • Nearly 90% of customers in Wave 4 agree that the location of HART bus routes are convenient. • Customer satisfaction with the frequency of HART’s service increased by 16% from Wave 3 to Wave 4 

HART has their 10 year TDP approved by their Board that gets regularly updated. HART also defined a 10 year Vision plan during Go Hillsborough. Information regarding these TDP plans can be found here.  Why is HART's TDP not mentioned by the Times? Is the Times is intentionally ignoring HART's TDP or they don't know about it? Before taxpayers feed more consultants to do more studies, HART's TDP should be looked at first.

HART has a dedicated funding source, a .5 mill ad valorem property tax that provides about $35 million a year to HART. HART's other revenues include their yearly federal formula funds, fare box revenue and advertising revenue totaling between $70 and 80 million a year. If they receive some state/federal grant monies, that is additional.

HART's TDP will be going through its latest update this year so why not improve it and determine how best to leverage the money HART already receives…….instead of paying more consultants to continue proposing costly transit boondoggles. The county funded HART's north-south MetroRapid BRT so could the county fund the east-west MetroRapid?

Let's look at more of these types of services, electric powered short hop shuttles - though calling them limos is a bit comical.

Why?

Because the other side of the transit coin is that transit ridership is down nationwide, including in Hillsborough County. HART's ridership 2016 numbers can be found in the February 6, 2017 Board packet (scroll down to Status Report starting at page 6-5)

December 2016 bus ridership declined 11.6% compared to December 2015 and all mode ridership is off 8.4% for the three months of FY 2017.  

Pinellas County PSTA's ridership is also declining.  Declining transit ridership in the Tampa Bay area is no different than what is occurring in municipalities that have spent millions and billions on very costly transit projects:

The above list does not include Charlotte:

For the first seven months of the fiscal year, which began in July, local bus ridership was down 6.7 percent. 

Overall, the transit system’s ridership is down 5 percent. That includes buses, the Lynx Blue Line and the streetcar. 

The decline has lasted several years, however.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article134279674.html#storylink=cp

In addition, here's the latest about Denver: Downtown Denver survey shows people are opting to drive over using public transit

The reality is that innovation and technology is already making an impact on traditional transit. It's also making an impact on how we use our own vehicles. We can easily use Uber or Lyft to go downtown to a Lightning game or any other event and not worry about or pay for parking.

Tampa Bay taxpayers must not be put in another position like SunRail SunFail where SunRail ticket revenue is less than ticketing expense. SunFail's ridership declined last year even though service was expanded.

The regional premium transit plan is currently looking at the CSX corridor. Let's think outside the box towards the future. Could such a corridor be more highly utilized as an AV corridor for autonomous buses, vans and vehicles instead of rail cars and tracks?

The FTA and the states will probably soon, if not already, start requiring that autonomous technology be included and addressed as part of any funding request.

The reality is choice riders are driving or using the sharing economy of ride-share, vehicle-share and bike-share.

With a new Administration in DC, there are lots of unknowns regarding the future ability to get federal grants for new transit projects. We hope federal grants for boondoggles stop.

The innovation and technology driving the future of transportation is disrupting traditional transit and how we use and will use buses, shuttles and our own vehicles. We will be able to more efficiently and effectively utilize our existing infrastructure and resources.

The private sector is leading the way and they will partner with the public sector to provide new and better services at lower costs.

Why not recover more of transit's operating costs through farebox recovery? With smart card technology we can re-think fare box recovery for how to use differentiated pricing instead of flat fares.

Why not look at a tiered farebox pricing model where choice riders pay their fare share while low income transit dependent riders receive a voucher or reduced rate. Some transit agencies in the US such as Seattle have already started implementing tiered farebox pricing.

Can we use congestion pricing for transit similar to what is now being used on managed toll lanes? What about time and distance pricing?

Other locales are stuck paying forever for costly fixed guideway/rail systems experiencing declining ridership. Tampa Bay is not stuck in these costly systems.

The reality is Tampa Bay is better positioned to partner with the entrepreneurs and innovators to leap frog over 19th century solutions, and provide cost effective transportation services people actually will use for the 21st Century.

The Times needs a reality check!

Respect the Will of the People So Tampa Bay Can Lead the Way in Transportation Innovation

Rail is like a cat with nine lives. While the rail cartel has lost every transportation sales tax hike referendum in Tampa Bay since 2010, they continue pushing their rail agenda. 

With a sales tax hike now dead for November, the rail cartel shape shifters are morphing into their latest two prong strategy. The first prong is pushing AGAIN to create a regional transit agency that will result in a regional taxing authority. Their second prong is to push our state legislature to allow cities to have their own "transit" (not transportation) referendums to fund high cost rail.

These are bad ideas on numerous fronts! 

In government, bigger is not better nor more efficient, especially over the long term. Bigger agencies just keep getting bigger and bigger and more powerful. Powerful government entities can be a breeding ground for more corruption. When local taxpayers are an arms length away from the decision makers, their influence is diluted while special interest influence increases. It is much harder for local taxpayers to fight a regional taxing authority's bad policies. 

Regarding city referendums, where is the business model and business case that confirms the cities of Tampa or St. Petersburg could ever fund costly rail projects? Remember Buckhorn was on the only NO vote on the Tampa Streetcar when he was on the Tampa City Council in the 1990's. He said back then the Streetcar did not have a viable financial model. And he was absolutely right.

Taxpayers do not want to be responsible for bailing out more rail boondoggles. State taxpayers bail out Tri-Rail in South Florida every year to the tune of tens of millions of dollars. State taxpayers have been forced to pay for SunRail that is drowning in deficits through 2020. If the state legislature ever passed legislation to allow transit referendums by cities, they better ensure there could never be any taxpayer bailouts when the high cost rail projects go financially south and drown in deficits. 

The reason for a regional transit taxing entity? The entire region would fund the costly rail boondoggles and bail out the financial disasters.

The media arm of the rail cartel is doing their part. The TBT published this editorial recently.
The half-full, half-empty Tampa Bay transit debate

Any significant change — from merging the Hillsborough and Pinellas bus systems to creating a new regional transit authority to allowing transit referendums by cities — would require action from the Legislature.

It's going to take multiple approaches to meet this challenge, from better bus service to express highway lanes to light rail.

Too many public officials still lag behind private business leaders in acknowledging the urgency of the issue and agreeing that mass transit including light rail, not more roads, is the long-range solution. 

The earliest another voter referendum could be held on a new transit plan may be 2020. That's how long it likely will take for any structural changes to transit oversight to be adopted, a premium transit study by the state and HART to be completed, and a new transit vision to be created and sold to voters.

State Senator Latvala, Appropriations chair, is pushing for a third time the merger of HART and PSTA. He already forced two taxpayer funded studies previously done and after both studies a merger was rejected. Latvala must not threaten to withhold state funds to our local transit agencies if they don't agree to merge. That is bully tactics and totally unacceptable behavior.

Latvala should focus instead on a real problem in his own backyard - reforming PSTA. PSTA has been fiscally mismanaged for years.

Latvala should focus on overhauling the incompetent PSTA Board dominated by almost all electeds who continue to provide too little oversight and allow CEO Brad Miller to run amok. It was Brad Miller who misused Federal transit security funds to promote Greenlight Pinellas. That alone should have been grounds for removal.

PSTA has too many issues and Hillsborough county taxpayers want no part of them. Merging PSTA into HART is not the answer to PSTA's problems.

If Latvala wants better productivity and to save taxpayers money, he should focus on getting rid of agencies we simply do not need. Start by eliminating the Hillsborough County PTC that is the inhibitor to innovation and the poster child for cronyism and corruption. Then get rid of TBARTA which is duplicative, a waste of taxpayer money and their responsibilities can be folded in elsewhere such as FDOT.

Also, according to the TBT editorial:

The 2010 Hillsborough referendum was supported by voters in Tampa, and the 2014 Pinellas referendum won its strongest support among St. Petersburg voters.

Sunbeam times blog reported after the 2014 defeat of Greenlight: Majority of St. Petersburg Residents Also Rejected Greenlight Pinellas, 52:48

An analysis of voter data by the Sunbeam Times reveals that the measure failed by a 4 point margin, with 52% of residents voting it down and 48% voting in favor (the county rejected by 62% to 38%). 49 of St. Petersburg precincts voted against Greenlight Pinellas and it was only favored by 40 precincts. It was approved only in a geographically contiguous area largely in the South and East of the city. The Greenlight plan was soundly defeated in Western and northern areas of the city.

Below is a picture of the precincts (in green) that supported the 2010 Hillsborough County rail tax.

Hillsborough County 2010
Rail tax map of vote results by precinct

Precincts near the proposed rail lines voted for the tax in 2010. However, there were still a significant number of precincts in the city of Tampa that voted against the tax. Since then, voters within the entire Tampa Bay region have become more educated on the issue, thus the even bigger defeat of Greenlight Pinellas in 2014. 

The Go Hillsborough debacle did not help the rail cartel's cause. It simply added more skepticism and distrust. 

There is absolutely no guarantee that voters in the cities of Tampa or St. Petersburg will vote for a sales tax hike into perpetuity to pay for high cost trains that few of them will ride.

The reality is innovation and technology are and will continue disrupting traditional transit services.  Uber and Lyft continue to expand their quasi-transit businesses, UberPool and Lyft Line. We used UberPool numerous times when we were in San Francisco last March and it worked great at a real nice price. 

Hat tip to Robert Poole's Surface Transportation Innovations Newsletter this month that included "Disrupting urban transit":

If automated shuttle buses and automated versions of Uber/Lyft/Didi (Didi is in China) ride-sharing vehicles materialize in a decade or two, does it really make sense to be investing many billions of dollars in light-rail and heavy-rail systems over the next several decades? In an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Daily News on July 6th, Susan Shelley raised this question about current transit expansion plans in that region:

"Metro CEO Phil Washington says his agency is building a transit system for 100 years from now, but every day that sounds more disconnected from reality. The future has arrived, and it's on the road. We could be planning for improvements to our freeways, and transit service upgrades made possible by cost-effective driverless buses."

Three days later Bryan Mistele, the CEO of traffic firm INRIX, had an op-ed in the Seattle Times, headlined "Sound Transit's Expansion Will Be Obsolete Before It's Built." That plan, estimated to cost $54 billion, would be constructed over the next 25 years, and would provide transit with an additional one percent of daily trips by 2040. He argued that autonomous, connected, electric, and shared vehicles will likely cause the system to be obsolete before it opens. These are sobering thoughts, from a transportation professional who is very knowledgeable about these disruptive forces.

According to this recent article, Columbus will 'leap-frog' light rail as transit option after Smart City Challenge win

A wave of new transportation technology is coming to Columbus after the city won the federal Smart City Challenge. 

The grant money will usher in driverless cars but could end the idea of rail as a mass-transit option.

“The City of Columbus plans to leap-frog fixed rail” by using new modes of transportation, Columbus says in the U.S. Department of Transportation application.

The reality is the window of opportunity for building costly rail systems is quickly closing and our local rail cartel surely understands that. 

As costly rail becomes passe, the Feds and the States may stop funding costly outdated rail projects as more cost-effective, flexible and more efficient transportation solutions are available.

The best place to be to take advantage of the biggest transportation disruption since the automobile is to stay flexible and not get financially forever locked into costly projects.

It's exciting times for transportation as innovation is fast emerging. From platooning and "connected" vehicles to autonomous vehicles and buses to deliveries being made by drones, we will be able to more efficiently utilize our existing rubber-wheeled infrastructure. 

The rail cartel needs to change course because they have lost every transportation sales tax hike referendum they have championed. They must respect the will of the voters, the will of the taxpayers and the consent of the governed. 

Stop trying to push tax hikes for costly trains!

Because Tampa Bay is in a great position to take advantage of new technology and innovation. 

Instead of looking in the rearview mirror, we can charge ahead and lead the way in Transportation solutions for the future.

The PTC and the Agents for the Status Quo

The Hillsborough Public Transportation Club Commission was in the news again continuing their jihad against Uber and Lyft in Hillsborough County.

Particularly popular with millennials, ride sharing services are in a constant battle against the Agents for the Status Quo.

The battle between technology and established rules came to a Tampa courtroom Friday as Uber and the Public Transportation Commission argued over whether the ride-sharing company could continue to operate in Hillsborough County.

The commission issued a cease and desist letter in January, which Uber has largely ignored. Friday’s hearing was on the commission’s request for a temporary injunction barring Uber from offering rides in Hillsborough County unless it complies with local taxi-cab regulations.

It is not only Hillsborough that is blocking the adoption of technology.  Uber has recently announced they will withdraw from Broward County. New York Mayor de Blasio is embattled with Uber, trying to control access to the city streets. Huh? Uber responded with a "de Blasio" mode in their mobile app to show excessive wait times due to de Blasio's rationing plan in the city.

But de Blasio has a plan to reign in Uber.

A top de Blasio ally said City Hall also expects the city’s organized left — the labor movement and its outgrowths — will help organize opposition to Uber. They are the closest thing around to natural supporters for the mayor’s side, because it’s hard to imagine de Blasio rallying much of anyone to the yellow cab industry.

Align with the status quo unions to avoid the future. Not a force ready for change.

Uber vs. status quo

Even Hillary weighed in as a Luddite, in her typical have it both ways style.

Speaking last week at the New School in Manhattan, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said she wanted to help the hard-pressed middle class.

But she also attacked the freedom that produces dynamism.

She brought up what she called the “on demand” or “gig economy,” meaning upstarts like Airbnb, which lets people book their homes for short-term rentals, and such ride-sharing companies as Uber and Lyft. She said this development is “creating exciting opportunities and unleashing innovation, but it’s also raising hard questions about workplace protections and what a good job will look like in the future.”

She added that, as president, she would “crack down on bosses who exploit employees by misclassifying them as contractors.”

Speaking of "raising hard questions", Hillary's had enough problems figuring out her email lately. She would better serve us if she were to crack down on herself exploiting legal loopholes and misclassifying email she owes the people she wants to serve.

Talk about not getting it. Hillary, who last actually drove a car in 1996, likely has not been in a taxi since forever, is clueless about modern application of technologies... and economics, and personal choice and motivation.

I wonder what she thought about the iPhone when it was introduced.

On second thought, I don't want to know.

Uber drivers work when they want, stop working when they want. Uber has no control of their schedule. The drivers only get paid when they work. They are independent contractors. Welcome to the new world of the gig economy.

But with all her driving experience, Hillary knows better.

Meanwhile, taking a strong stand for a politician these days, Jeb Bush rode Uber in San Francisco recently.

Jeb's no technophobe.

According to this recent Wall Street Journal commentary:

Republican presidential candidates are having fun with all this. Marco Rubio,who last year sided with Uber over regulators in Miami, accused Mrs. Clinton of trying to “regulate 21st-century industries with 20th-century ideas.” Jeb Bushpointedly traveled by Uber for his visit to Thumbtack, a Silicon Valley startup. Meanwhile, Rand Paul says he would like our government to adopt the Uber model—more information and customer ratings—while Ted Cruz says his campaign will be as disruptive of politics-as-usual as Uber is of old business models.

At the state of Florida level, state Senator Jeff Brandes is preparing to take down the PTC again.

Led by state Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Republican from St. Petersburg, lawmakers have contemplated a number of bills over the past two sessions that would prevent local governments from over-regulating the ride-sharing companies. One pitched last session would have created a statewide regulatory framework for the companies that might have eliminated the local regulations constraining the companies. But the bills failed to pass.

Efforts by some state lawmakers over the years to eliminate the PTC altogether and hand the regulatory duties over to county officials have also failed. Brandes says he is determined to try again when the Legislature meets in August.

“There’s no reason for the PTC to exist,” he says. “It’s a red-tape factory.”

The commission’s regulation of Uber and Lyft limits opportunities for people wanting to earn extra cash and stymies innovation, he says. No other county in the state has an agency like the PTC.

Hillary, de Blasio, and the PTC are working against new transportation and work choices, while protecting the taxi industry, which they avoid in their chauffeur driven limos and SUVs.

They are the new Agents for the Status Quo, protecting a favored industry, the taxi club, who donates back to the Agents for the Status Quo for campaign donations. Yet another circle of money they use against the rest of us.

This not a right vs. left issue. David Plouffe, formerly Obama's campaign manager, is working for Uber. Hillary and de Blasio are on the left, but much of the Hillsborough PTC leadership are Republicans.

Locally, the Hillsborough Commissioners have started the process to sell us on a new sales tax to improve transportation. Yet three Republican commissioners on the PTC board - Ken Hagan, Victor Crist, and Al Higginbothom, seem to spend more effort trying to run Uber and Lyft out of town than they are exerting political leadership on the flawed GoHillsborough plan.

The left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.

Meanwhile, Uber continues to invest in the state of Florida, having just announced their Miami headquarters.

One of the world's leading tech innovators, Uber, is investing in Miami where they are allowed to operate, rather than locally in Tampa, where we talk about Innovation Alliances and Destinations. But won't walk the walk.

Uber noticed. Will others innovators notice?

If the Republicans were smart, they'd start to use this "gig economy" with Uber and Lyft as an issue at the national level, since it is a favorite of millennials. Hillary won't be able to defend her position with more dissembling. Then perhaps millennials will listen to who's really pro-innovation, and who's the Agent for the Status Quo.  Hopefully our local sheep politicians will then get the message and stop acting as enemies of the future.

Is Uber the future? Let's find out.

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty.

This is known as "bad luck.”

― Robert A. Heinlein