Tri-Rail Downtown was due last fall, now targeted for this fall

A fall start is predicted for Tri-Rail trains to roll into Miami Central Station. David Dech, executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA), made the projection last week during a presentation to the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust (CITT) board.

The long-awaited $70 million tax-funded project, which was to be completed in 2017, faced multiple hurdles. In May 2022, then SFRTA executive director Steven Abrams told the CITT board he expected to revenue service to begin Nov. 1, 2022. It didn’t. Trains don’t jump hurdles well. Mr. Abrams, amid construction, training, and other issues, announced his resignation in January 2022.

Mr. Dech was hired last July, two months after Mr. Abrams’ Nov. 1 prediction. Last October, Mr. Dech advised the CITT board of nine obstacles delaying completion of the long-awaited service to bring decades-old Tri-Rail into downtown Miami. They ranged from exposed rebar, to platform issues, to negotiations with Brightline and the Federal East Coast Railway (FEC).

But the confident Mr. Dech, who obviously hit the track rolling, also told the board last October that he was looking at a solid 2023 start, and narrowed that down to this fall at last week’s meeting.

“We’ve got some really quality conversations going on between us and our partners and Brightline and FEC,” he said in October, “and I think that’s one of the things that we were missing before.”

Mr. Dech advised obviously please CITT board members that:

■Brightline has completed platform improvements on Tri-Rail tracks approved by the SFRTA.

■Brightline, the SFRTA and the FEC have completed two steps of the approved training.

■Tri-Rail managers have completed a mandated Brightline/FEC rules class and exam.

■Brightline has become qualified on the FEC portion of the rail corridor in order to train Tri-Rail personnel.

■A dispatcher hiring plan has been submitted to the SFRTA and is under review.

■A Tri-Rail proposed schedule has been reviewed and found compatible by Brightline analysts.

On-going tasks, Mr. Dech explained, include:

■The SFRTA is removing the Automatic Train Control (ATC) territory switch from its stock at the request of the FEC. It requires a software change to ensure ATC does not govern when operating on the South Florida Rail Corridor (SFRC).

■ATC Vehicle Qualifications Testing.

■Completing static testing.

■Installing ATC software.

Dynamic testing will start once access to the corridor is approved, Mr. Dech said.

Tri-Rail is a government-owned service.