Writer: Sara Warden
2 min read December 2021 — Greater Fort Lauderdale has always been seen as a must-visit destination. Now, it is becoming a leading contender as a place to live. Within the last year, LinkedIn identified the region as the No. 1 metro for migrating software and IT workers, and Broward County is riding that wave. The challenge now lies in having the appropriate transportation and infrastructure in place to accommodate this increase in population.
“The infusion of people started a decade ago and from a transportation perspective, Broward needed to commit more resources to relieve traffic and congestion and develop other means of mobility to get people around the county,” Sandy-Michael McDonald, director of the Broward County Office of Economic and Small Business Development, told Invest:. “In 2018, Broward was successful in the mapping initiative for transportation and highway projects and is now working with our cities and the county to do more with our roads to make them less congestive and more pedestrian friendly.”
But the cautionary tale of rapid, unchecked growth sees gentrification and a loss of affordability. Mayor of the City of Fort Lauderdale Dean Trantalis is well aware of this challenge. “We need to be careful of a double-edge sword with business recruitment as it can lead to higher rents and real estate prices,” Trantalis told Invest:. “We must keep Fort Lauderdale as a city affordable to everyone.”
So how is the region doing this? In a couple of ways.
Although Broward’s penny tax has made it relatively self-sufficient in transportation spending, it will need some help with the megaprojects that will propel it into the 22nd century. One such helper is Elon Musk, whose Boring Company has selected Fort Lauderdale as the location for its Las Olas Loop underground commuter tunnel. Another private sector venture – the Brightline train – recently resumed Fort Lauderdale operations after a 20-month pandemic-related pause.
All of this is also underpinned by federal funding, which has made headline news in the last year due to the recent passage of President Joe Biden’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which contains billions for roads, bridges and rail connections.
There has been a concerted focus on infrastructure in an effort to deal with increased traffic from huge population in-migration in the last few years. On top of the effort to put forward a commuter rail line between Miami and West Palm Beach, which would pass through Fort Lauderdale, the city is looking to build a tunnel through its middle that will allow the local commuter line to go through the city without interference. “These projects are great opportunities for us to move forward as a 22nd-century city,” says Trantalis.
But these projects need money, and in Broward, a large chunk comes from the Mobility Advancement Program, or MAP penny tax initiative. Started in 2018, the program allocates 1 cent of the county’s sales tax to transportation operations, transportation services, infrastructure and railways. The penny tax is estimated to collect about $355 million per year and has been in place for about 30 years.
For Bob Swindell, president and CEO of the Greater Fort Lauderdale Alliance, the momentum in Fort Lauderdale and Broward County is not stopping anytime soon. “I see us building on the strength of the last several years of branding and identity for Greater Fort Lauderdale,” he told Invest:. “Families and individuals continue to move to South Florida and we’re looking forward to continued growth.”
But there is no room for distraction from the goal of equitable and even growth. “What we’ll see in Fort Lauderdale is a city that runs,” Trantalis told Invest:. “We’re going to get away from the frustrations of traffic, water shortages and sewer backups and realize how important our natural resources are going forward.”
