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"YOUR GGVERNMENT" -~ #6 From: Governor's Office
by Farris Bryant Tallahassee, Florida
Governor of Florida
THE SUNSHINE STATE PARKRAY:
A NEW ONENESS FOR FLORIDA
Like velvet ribbons the Sunshine State rarkway cuts a
path through Florida's interior for 265-miles from Miami to
Wildwood in Central Florida where it links into the rapidly
developing Interstate highway network, and -- presto! -- the
drive to Florida is a breeze to Americans everywhere.
The Sunshine State Parkway provides new gateways for
tourism, and it draws the state's cities closer together for
Floridians. The result is that it is proving to be an out-
standing financial success.
The acid test of a turnpike's financial success is, of
course, earnings versus obligations. To meet its annual
obligation, the turnpike must daily earn $37,6h0. In the
first 213 days of 196R the daily total income has averaged
$b0,300.
Projecting this over the balance of the year we should
have a surplus of over one million dollars.
Breaking this down into percentage figures: the bond
coverage for the first seven months of 196 was a healthy
1.58 percent. That means we collected 58 percent more than was
required to cover the bonds.
These excess earnings are being placed into the Turnpike's
bond retirement fUnd.
Did you know Florida spends less per mile on turnpike
construction than anywhere else in the nation? The 156-mile
extension of the Sunshine State Parkway, Opened on January
20th of this year, cost $38h,307 per mile. Compare this to
$1,585,512 per mile in New York, $3,127,000 per mile in New
Jersey, and $h,562,000 per mile in Massachusetts.
Despite the normal increases in construction costs one
would expect since January 25, 1957 when the first 109-mile
length of the Turnpike from Miami to Fort Pierce was Open, the
construction cost of the extension Just completed was actually
$21,000 less per mile.
Yet the extension is in every way a better highway than
the original Turnpike length. The median strip, that area
or grass between the northbound and southbound lanes, is #0
feet instead of 20 feet wide, and the right of way is too feet
wide instead of 300 feet.
The entire 265 miles of the Sunshine State Parkway was
built without one cent of cost to the taxpayer, and not one
cent for administration or maintenance.
Yet this tell highway, which costs you nothing unless
you elect to use it, provides gasoline tax money which goes
to building free roads. Toll roads build free roads.
As or the first of the year. and this was before the
Turnpike was opened in its full length, Just about doubling
the traffic flow, an estimated lSB-million gallons of gasoline
had been burned on the Turnpike. Computing this at 7 cents
per gallon-some $10.7 million of tax monies from the Turnpike
alone went toward building free roads in Florida.
The original log-mile Bob-tail" Turnpike was too short
to prove attractive to Florida's trucking industry. But the
extension has increased commercial trucking on the Turnpike
by 98 percent since the first of the year. Trucking firms
from North Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina are
now using this new major artery or the combined 1-75 and
Turnpike. The Turnpike creates new trucking industry in
Florida, it makes motoring easier on the narrower free high-
ways, and it extends the markets of all those who use it.
The Sunshine State Parkway. which costs less than two
cents per mile to use, has brought about a change in motorists
thinking. We now find ourselves computing trips in elapsed
driving time rather than miles. The distance from Miami to
Jacksonville via the Turnpike and US 301 is actually 38 miles
longer than the same trip by way or US l, but it requires 2
hours and 15 minutes less driving time.
Gainesville, in North Central Florida, is now less than
six hours from Miami, and it is an easy, carefree, drive
instead of a bumpy, exhausting day long Journey.
O
The speed limit on the Sunshine State Parkway is now
70 miles per hour day and night. Being upped from 65 miles
per hour has had no detrimental effect on the Turnpike's
safety records which are among the best in the nation, and
twice as good as Florida's record on free access highways.
The Sunshine State Parkway's grassy palm-lined right-
of-way sweeps through the typical areas or Florida -- her
old south with its moss-draped cypress trees, her rolling
horselands, her citrus groves of the Indian River country,
and her swamps on the fringe of the Everglades.
The Sunshine State Parkway is a highway to economic
growth and individual achievement. It gives Florida a new
ODEBQBS c
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