Tri-Rail due downtown this year – where will be next?
Tri-Rail is on track to roll this year into downtown Miami, linking as far north as Palm Beach County with commuter rail, its executive director says, and it’s now being urged to add a station between Hialeah and Miami Central Station.
The effort to engineer the last 12 miles has been bedeviled by issues ranging from cooperation with the tracks’ owners to safety and even getting the trains to roll past the new station’s platform, which they couldn’t six months ago.
David Dech, executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority that runs the publicly owned Tri-Rail, told the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust last week that a list of barriers had been removed in the past six months, though he cited a handful more.
Among them: the line was overhauling one locomotive for the service and another was due in 10 days, he said, and Tri-Rail is awaiting certification of its Automatic Train Control software, expected the first week in November.
“We think we can bring it in at the end of 2023 if things work the way we want to,” he told the trust. “We’re running these projects in concurrence to try to bring this in…. We are enjoying a very good relationship right now with our partners at FEC (Florida East Coast Railway), at Brightline.”
“The light at the end of the tunnel, I can see it and I’m looking forward to riding the train into the station right across the street,” said trust member Joseph Curbelo.
The operation is to add 26 Tri-Rail commuter trips a day to passenger trips by Brightline and freight runs by FEC on right-of-way in those last 12 miles.
Once that’s done, said trust Chairman Oscar Braynon, another step must go on Tri-Rail’s agenda: “You’re running through 12 miles of Miami-Dade County without a station. Someone should start thinking about planning a station somewhere else in Dade County along that east-west route” between Hialeah and downtown.
Kelis
October 6, 2023 at 11:16 am
How about a station at NW 22nd Avenue. There is land available and could become a very nice, mixed used TOD. Even 17th Avenue could work potentially as well.
Daphne Urbina
October 6, 2023 at 5:09 pm
Instead of extending the tri rail please get new trains, the current trains are filthy and dirty at best, most items on train don’t work and the homeless people sleeping on the train makes it even worth. It is so rusty, old, you can hear everything going bad in the train not to mention the delays to to mechanical issues because they won’t fix them correctly. The rust outside and the smell from inside including the horrible smell coming from the bathrooms it insane. It makes us look bad we have this trains and the conditions but tri rail doesnt care, all they care is extending the tracks get more money and offer bad service.
Anonymous
October 9, 2023 at 10:35 am
Daphne, It’s already a done deal; 179 Million dollars for new equipment. They received a matching government grant back in May to replace 24 cars. From what I heard, they’ve been ordered. Manufacturing is backed up with other orders so it’ll be a few years before we see them. The new cars will include more reliable Wi-Fi, modern upgraded AC and bathrooms, better and cleaner locomotives and much more.
Richard
October 10, 2023 at 8:12 am
I’ve been hearing about this need for certification in order to go directly into downtown Miami for at least ten years. TriRail has very little credibility.