Back from the dust heap: eastern commuter rail

Posted on Tue, Dec. 13, 2005

Is South Florida willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to develop a passenger rail system on eastern tracks?

BY LARRY LEBOWITZ
llebowitz@herald.com

The idea of running commuter trains on the Florida East Coast Railway corridor is rising once more from the dust bins of dream projects that were oft-studied, but never removed from the drawing boards.

''For years, governments have been looking at it with drooling mouths,'' Scott Seeburger, a project manager with the Florida Department of Transportation, said of the 82-mile FEC corridor that runs through 45 downtowns from Jupiter to Miami.

Supporters say commuter trains along the FEC corridor would give millions of South Floridians an alternative to driving and take advantage of a redevelopment boom along the tracks east of Interstate 95 from downtown Miami to Jupiter.

GOOD ALTERNATIVE

Unlike Tri-Rail, which runs along a largely industrial and warehouse corridor dominated by Interstate 95, boosters say an eastern train would provide an accessible alternative that is much closer to where people live and work.

The FEC corridor would also provide local governments with a linchpin to entice transit-oriented homes, shops and offices to redeveloping downtowns.

Several major residential and retail projects, such as Midtown Miami, are already taking advantage of the boom and would be strategically poised if passenger trains returned to the area for the first time since 1968.

Local officials coveted the FEC corridor when Tri-Rail was being developed in the 1980s, but FEC management at the time refused to sell.

WRONG TRACK

That's how Tri-Rail wound up on the CSX Transportation tracks that run on the less populated, and more industrial areas west of Interstate 95 from West Palm Beach to Miami International Airport.

''Right idea, wrong corridor. That's always been the problem with Tri-Rail,'' said Johnathan Nelson, a Miami Beach high school teacher and train enthusiast.

FEC WILLING

Headed by former Miami banker Adolfo Henriques, the new FEC corporate leadership appears to be much more willing to sell a portion of its corridor for commuter rail.

The biggest questions: How much would it cost to buy a portion of the corridor and develop a parallel passenger train that wouldn't damage FEC's ability to run thousands of freight cars every day from Jacksonville to Miami? And who would pay for it?

Some conservative estimates place the price tag on the corridor alone at $500 million to $600 million.

Tack on the construction of 82 miles of track and dozens of stations and the budget quickly swells toward the $1 billion mark.

LENGTHY STUDY

The most recent study, funded by all three counties and the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority that runs Tri-Rail, will take several years, said Carlos Cejas, a project manager with the Gannett Fleming consulting firm.

The study will look at all of the types of transit that could be used -- including a commuter rail service like Tri-Rail, bus-rapid transit like the Miami-Dade Busway, or light-rail that can make more stops like the proposed downtown Miami Streetcar -- as well as the projected costs and likely ridership.

Two more public hearings to introduce the study are slated for Thursday in Fort Lauderdale and Monday in West Palm Beach.