David Dech drives Tri-Rail bid to enter downtown Miami

South Florida rail executive David Dech, who, like Horatio Alger characters, rose from switchman, to brakeman, to conductor, to engineer, to management jobs at two rail companies, and, finally, to executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority (SFRTA), may be facing more obstacles getting Tri-Rail trains to Miami Central Station than Alger’s The Match Boy, The Cash Boy or even Ragged Dick faced in their travails to the top.

However, in his last job as vice president at CapMetro, he did manage to push through a railroad job four months ahead of mandated federal deadlines, all while maintaining on-time performance for commuter service, according to an article in masstransit.com.

While earlier predictions, not by Mr. Dech, suggested a late fall launch of downtown service, he is looking at the end of 2023 or early 2024.

“It’s taken a little longer to get the access that we would have liked,” Mr. Dech told Miami Today last week. “When I was at the CITT (Citizens’ Independent Transit Trust) meeting, I explained that there was a little bit of turnover at” the (FEC) Florida East Coast Railway, “so people who were stepping into those roles” have to get up to speed.

“We had a really productive call yesterday (June 6) with the Florida Dispatch Company, the company that dispatches Brightline and will dispatch Tri-Rail trains going into Miami Central.

“We’ve really being going through some of the logistics of the day-to-day testing and how it all has to work,” Mr. Dech said.

How many extra conductors, controllers and engineers will the SFRTA need? “We’ve been kind of anticipating this for some time, so we’re staffed up. We have enough engineers and conductors,” Mr. Dech said.

The project was to be completed in 2017 but several factors delayed completion of a link to the Brightline station, Miami Today reported last May. The $70 million tax-funded project is to add more Tri-Rail commuter service to the 72-mile South Florida Rail Corridor.

Miami-Dade County funded almost $14 million and the City of Miami contributed $7.2 million for the downtown link. The SFRTA hired Mr. Dech last July to lead completion of this and other Miami-Dade projects.

Asked about a June 1 mobility scorecard published by Transit Alliance Miami, Mr. Dech said that “the only plan it really deals with that touches Tri-Rail is at the Metro transfer station for some of the walkability there. And we’re more than happy to work with anybody on any project.”

Currently, Tri Rail “runs 50 trains a day, mostly along the I-95 corridor. We currently serve three international airports, so we have great connectivity to the airports,” Mr. Dech added.

“We’re a great way to get yourself to and from work. We have parking at almost all of our stations. That’s 50 train-fulls of people a day” not clogging I-95.

He also told Miami Today that SFRTA already has signed agreements withs FEC and Brightline to allow it to run 26 additional trains from Tri-Rail’s existing corridor over their rails into Miami Central.