FYI Miami: June 22, 2023

Bellow are some of the FYIs in this week’s edition. The entire content of this week’s FYIs and Insider sections is available by subscription only. To subscribe click here.

HERE COMES TRI-RAIL: Tri-Rail has won long-awaited approval to begin testing its passenger trains this week on the railway tracks that will carry them into MiamiCentral Station. Tests continue through Friday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Tri-Rail’s parent South Florida Regional Transportation Authority has already said it may seek added testing dates. The tests are a missing link to getting the three-county transportation service to bring passengers into and out of downtown Miami for the first time. Government-operated Tri-Rail would share the downtown station and tracks with privately operated Brightline. The test trains are to run no faster than 40 miles per hour over 8 miles of tracks starting from Hialeah eastbound onto tracks that now carry only FEC freight trains, then to other FEC tracks currently used by Brightline and into the station. No start date for passenger service has been announced.

TRANSIT’S BRAIN: As Miami-Dade County moves ahead to seek a super-brain to provide real-time information along its mass transit system, the Transportation, Mobility and Planning Committee last week agreed that it will extend for three more years a software contact in use now to do the job until the new super-system is scoped out through research, then advertised for exactly what the county wants and tested for up to a year while the old system remains in place – just to be sure. The extension with San Francisco-based Swiftly Inc., which would cost nearly $2.5 million, now heads for full county commission approval.

ON THE RUNWAY: Replacement of a deteriorating runway at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport at a cost of more than $30 million by OHLA USA got support from the county’s Airports and Economic Development Committee last week, sending the contract to the full county commission. Work is to take 450 days.

COMPETITIVE SCHOOL: A new law has established a public Florida School for Competitive Academics, which could start admitting students in grades six through 12 in the 2024-2025 academic year. The bill said the primary purpose will be to “provide a rigorous academic curriculum, and the secondary purpose is to prepare students for regional, state, and national academic competitions in all areas of study, including, but not limited to, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.” The bill also said the school in Alachua County will include “selective admissions requirements.”