Duval adds weight in bid to stop high-speed train

[bobliocatt]

June 2, 2004

Duval adds weight in bid to stop high-speed train

TALLAHASSEE -- A proposed ballot measure to kill Florida's voter-mandated high-speed rail project cleared its first milestone Tuesday, with enough signatures to warrant review by the state Supreme Court.

Elections officials have verified nearly 55,000 petitions submitted by Derail the Bullet Train, a campaign led by Florida Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher. That's more than 10 percent of the 488,722 needed to make the ballot.

A hefty chunk of the signatures came from Northeast Florida -- 12,873 total, or 24 percent of the 54,774 statewide signatures verified so far. The signatures were collected in the 3rd, 4th and 6th congressional districts, which include Duval, Clay, Putnam, Baker and Nassau counties. Duval County alone supplied 9,749 signatures, second-highest in the state next to Pinellas County.

[wolfdawg54]

Do you have any idea why Duval County is stopping this? I think that it will be costly but it will help the state out a lot!

[bobliocatt]

Selfishness! The only reason why many in Jax are against it is because the first two phases will be between Tampa & Orlando and Orlando & Miami.

They tried to get me sign up for a petition and the only reason they came up with against it was that "you know it won't be coming to Jacksonville". Well to make a long story short, no body in my house signed it.

[wolfdawg54]

That is disappointing news. I am upset that Jacksonville would act that way!

[Brickell]

dissapointing but not suprising. There's very much a dichotomy between north and south florida. North Floridians feel that South Florida gets all the resources and money, while south floridians think that the north floridians retain too much political power over the state.

Ever seen Ulee's Gold?

Not that it has anything to do with high speed rail, but it does a good job of demonizing peninsular florida.

I've always thought of Jacksonville as being somewhat neutral though.

[bobliocatt]

a lot of this is also due to ignorance and boat load of negative information from Bush & Co. and not enough positive info being published in Jax.

When I was in Lakeland, we were swamped with both negative and positive information regarding the system. Since I've been in Jax, I haven't heard one positive thing about the system coming from the Jax media. Only what Bush preaches. With that much one-sidedness going on, its no wonder that a majority of the signature petitions are coming from North Florida.