FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

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Wednesday, April 3, 2019

#Ultra2019 debacle in #Miami is a sober reminder: the transit chaos in South Florida never ends! Brightline's awful decision that it should a run commuter rail connecting populous Eastern cities near US-1 on FEC tracks in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, makes the past decade of incompetency & bad decisions by Tri-Rail and the South Florida East Coast Corridor/SFECC study seem almost minor in comparison, though they DO have a lot to answer for to commuters/taxpayers, too. And the MPOs? Forget believing that they care what you think or want. They are the very picture of a runaway, non-accountable govt. agency. I know of what I speak!


#Ultra2019 debacle in #Miami is a sober reminder: the transit chaos in South Florida never ends! 
Brightline's awful decision that it should a run commuter rail connecting populous Eastern cities near US-1 on FEC tracks in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, makes the past decade of incompetency & bad decisions by Tri-Rail and the South Florida East Coast Corridor/SFECC study seem almost minor in comparison, though they DO have a lot to answer for to commuters/taxpayers, too. And the MPOs? 
Forget believing that they care what you think or want. They are the very picture of a runaway, non-accountable govt. agency. I know of what I speak!
Updated April 10th, 2019

  

More to come on those observations next week! 






































































































































Yes, can you tell that's one of my biggest longtime pet peeves?




















































As you can see below in emails and blog posts I wrote about him and his creepy behavior, and his organization's unsatisfactory performance, I have some history with Greg Stuart, the head of the Broward MPO. 
It's the "federally mandated transportation planning body that was welded to the county by a staffing contract since its establishment by the Florida Legislature in 1977. Its 19 members, mostly elected city and county leaders, control approximately hundreds of millions in federal transportation system funds and decide which Broward road and improvement projects get built and which don’t."

 As I noted in my blog post of February 6th, 2011, titled, Managed lanes: Broward MPO & FHA up to patronizing mischief on Thursday that'll cost you $$$ to drive on primary roads -the ones YOU already paid for
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/managed-lanes-broward-mpo-fha-up-to.html

Did the Broward MPO have any PUBLIC meetings scheduled in  in Hollywood or Hallandale Beach in 2009 before this came up?
No, there weren't ANY in all of southeast Broward County.
Satisfied?  

Below a particularly germane excerpt from a 2018 blog post here at Halandale Beach Blog
about transit and transportation policy and execution and how poorly it's thought out and administered in South Florida.
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2018/05/a-rising-tide-may-lift-all-boats-but.html
My factual blog posts also earned me a lot of animosity from high-ranking people at local transit organizations -like the Broward MPO among others- for daring to hold a mirror up to their consistently dismal performances given the resources they command and their near-anonymous hold on power.
Trust me, there are few govt/agencies in South Florida who are more used to people telling them how wonderful they were/are than the folks at the Broward MPO.

Which, of course, explains a lot.
The evidence of their collective failure is all around us in Broward.
Their failure to take other groups, agencies and elected officials to task publicly and highlight policies and methods that are counter-productive.

Instead, the Broward MPO is known largely by a sub-niche of people within the political power structure, and as I've tweeted about a few times over the years, is often NOT mentioned in the Miami Herald or the South Florida Sun-Sentinel for years at a time. YEARS.
Despite their stranglehold on policies and seemingly endless resources.
Where's the media oversight and accountability? MIA.

Though I could be wrong, I'm pretty sure I'm the only one of you reading this today to be criticized 
in public by the head of the Broward MPO after I detailed his and his agency's many failings at a Hallandale Beach City Commission meeting some years ago.
Promises, promises, but where were tangible results that Broward residents, taxpayers and Small Business owners actually wanted? MIA.

Thin-skinned Greg Stuart waited until I could no longer speak before blasting me, then obfuscated instead of simply answering the questions I posed to him because the truth was on my side, not his. As both of us knew at the time.
His aides at the time were not exactly the pick of the litter, either, considering their snide remarks at the time that showed that they were more cronies than transportation experts.

Needless to say, then-Mayor Joy Cooper -since removed from office by Gov. Scott after her arrest for numerous felonies- just chuckled from the dais, completely aware that she could prevent me from refuting what Stuart was saying, but unaware that Stuart was, in fact, making a monkey out of HER and the entire Commission.
In short, he took advantage of her great ignorance and was flat-out lying to her -to her face- while he also tried to make an example out of me publicly for daring to challenge him and his band of thin-skinned bureaucrats.  


Never heard of the Broward MPO or Greg Stuart? Read this eye-raising article that first appeared in the then-broward now Florida Bulldog

 FloridaBulldog
Whistleblower probes expose bad blood behind county, MPO split
By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
September 15, 2010

 Hardly anyone noticed last month when Independence Day arrived for the Metropolitan Planning Organization, Broward’s powerful but obscure transportation agency.

No politicians made speeches; no one marched in a parade. But it turns out that there were plenty of fireworks behind the scenes at the agency that largely decides what county roads get built or improved.

As the MPO was breaking away last spring, county employees filed a pair of whistleblower complaints accusing top MPO officials of mismanagement, unprofessionalism and cronyism.

The names of the whistleblowers are not public by law. But reports of county internal investigations obtained by Broward Bulldog using Florida’s public records law expose a bureaucratic fault line affecting hundreds of millions of dollars in public transportation spending, and future planning efforts.

 Read the rest of the article at:
http://www.floridabulldog.org/2010/09/whistleblower-probes-expose-bad-blood-behind-county-mpo-split/










Ultra Music festival, #Ultra2019, @ultra, #EDM, Miami-Dade County, Broward County, transportation, commuter rail, Tri-Rail Coastal, Broward MPO,  SFECC, Miami, Virginia Key,  #FyreFestival2, Key Biscayne, traffic, Billy Corben, @BillyCorben, #OceanDrive, Metrorail, Brightline, @iflymia, @FLLFlyer, Noah Pransky, SunPass, FDOT, Miami Beach, All Aboard Florida, Transit Miami, @transitmiami, FixMetroMDT, @FixMetroMDT, Jeff Brandes, @JeffreyBrandes, Brittany Wallman, @BrittanyWallman, @GetAroundSafely, @MarketUrbanism, Brian Bandell, @SFBJRealEstate, Buddy Nevins, @Buddynevins, RED BROWARD, @RedBroward, Larry Barszewski, @lbarszewski, Miami Int'l Airport, @iflymia, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Int'l Airport, @FLLFlyer, City of Hollywood,FL, @cohgov, Josh Levy, Mayor of Hollywood @JoshLevyHlwd, Broward County Commission, @browardinfo, Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners, @MiamiDadeBCC, Zara Larsson, @zaralarsson
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