Hire outside to rush Tri-Rail trains into downtown Miami

As Tri-Rail’s newly revealed barriers to serving downtown multiply, its leaders still say it could finally be running to Miami’s core this year. Equally likely, gold could be discovered under Biscayne Boulevard.

A month ago, long-sought Tri-Rail trips from as far as Palm Beach seemed a good bet for 2022. Then the commuter line’s board received the shock that its executive director had known for months its trains were too wide for the station and maybe too heavy to cross new bridges leading there. Disaster.

So on Dec. 22 the board that controls Tri-Rail, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, held an emergency meeting to learn more and found things are even worse than they seemed. 

A required control system that Tri-Rail acquired was outdated; it must get a new one and test it all over again. Moreover, its trains might not meet Environmental Protection Agency standards to enter downtown. A consultant must also determine whether fixing wide trains by cutting back steps on cars might violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, and that could involve the line’s other stations. Plus, rebar that’s supposed to be two feet below a concrete surface at Miami Central Station is sticking out.

It’s plain that opening downtown not just in 2022 but in our lifetimes is going to require strong professional leadership, coordination and communication. So far, Tri-Rail has shown too little of all three.

How did we get here? Back in 2014 Tri-Rail and Brightline – private luxury rail built to link Miami to Orlando – planned to share tracks into downtown to bring 2,000 daily Tri-Rail commuters. To get Tri-Rail trains into Brightline’s Miami Central Station was to cost $70 million. Governments paid most of that. The deal was done in 2015. Seven years later, nothing is ready to roll.

Tri-Rail use had been growing, up 30% from 2005 to 2014. By 2019 it was the 14th most ridden commuter rail in the US, carrying 4.5 million people yearly along 71 miles with 18 stations. The hope was that adding downtown Miami would take even more cars off highways.

But nobody anticipated the white-collar workers now flooding in from the Northeast and other areas where taxes are high and local rail is abundant. Addition of rail service would add to our attraction for high-paid workers who can work anywhere and are not wedded to the automobile. So Tri-Rail to downtown now means more to us that ever, but seems even farther away.

Just who is driving this train?

The Tri-Rail board has 10 members, none of whom is a Tri-Rail employee. All have day jobs. Some have multiple day jobs.

Each county – Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade – has one county commissioner on the board (Raquel Regalado from Miami-Dade). Each county also has one representative (J.C. de Ona from Miami-Dade). The governor appoints three members. The final member is the Florida Department of Transportation’s district secretary for Broward. Two board members are engineers; none has a background in railways. 

Tri-Rail’s full-time executive director is Steven Abrams, a lawyer and former Tri-Rail board member who was a Palm Beach county commissioner and mayor for more than nine years following seven years as mayor of Boca Raton. Board members are now questioning his contro

“The general take from Miami-Dade County,” said Ms. Regalado at the Dec. 22 emergency meeting, “is that there is a concern about the leadership at this organization, and we’re also concerned about future projects with Tri-Rail, specifically the Coastal Link,” a Miami-Dade plan for rapid rail in the Northeast Corridor that Tri-Rail has been seeking to operate.

To compound difficulties, Tri-Rail must resolve its growing list of problems while functioning in an uneasy working relationship with privately owned Brightline, which has suffered its own financial problems, including a long covid shutdown. 

Both lines now compete in the same three counties, though at different price points, with Brightline costlier but plusher. Both also covet the Northeast Corridor contract. Brightline oversaw station construction to pave Tri-Rail’s way into downtown, and its own role may be called into question. Heel-dragging by Brightline in helping Tri-Rail resolve problems might be predicted.

How best to resolve these problems? Tri-Rail executives who failed to communicate with their board quickly and candidly may have lost trust. Miami-Dade’s Inspector General is looking into the issue but has no authority at Tri-Rail. Tri-Rail is independent of all local governments. Tri-Rail’s board certainly can’t provide day-to-day direction.

One solution is a political minefield: search nationally and hire an experienced railroad leader as new executive director of Tri-Rail to direct, coordinate and communicate all operations needed to get Tri-Rail into downtown Miami.

Another solution may be more costly but more effective: engage a transportation engineering firm with executives who know the area’s political landscape (yes, there are several) to take full charge of every step in problem-solving, call the shots and report directly to the board until Tri-Rail successfully arrives downtown. The executive director would remains responsible for everything else until he inherits the completed downtown operations too.

It’s clear the paid staff and the board can’t handle these problems alone. They’re hiring consultants to recommend action on each facet. Why not hire a single consultant to run the show under board authority until Tri-Rail arrives downtown?   

This is not a matter of deciding what to do – what to do is to bring Tri-Rail downtown. It’s a matter of getting it done, well and fast. Put a professional (or professional firm) in charge who can do that.