By Jane Smith
Representatives for a new passenger rail service are courting South County coastal residents to convince them that an express intercity rail link is needed between Miami and Orlando.
All Aboard Florida will operate on the Florida East Coast Railway tracks, the legacy route created by Henry Flagler, said Ali Soule, public affairs manager. Train service between Miami and West Palm Beach will be ready by late 2016, and the rest of the line, which ends at the Orlando airport, will be running in 2017, she said.
“We will have continuously welded tracks so you won’t hear that clickety-clack noise,” she told Boynton Beach commissioners in early September. She declined to provide specifics on fares and ridership numbers anticipated by All Aboard Florida, a private company.
The City Commission postponed voting on a resolution until its residents provide more input.
The train will whisk through the South County at 79 mph. North of West Palm Beach, the train speeds will approach 110 mph.
Its representatives also gave a presentation at a Delray Beach commission workshop.
“The benefits to Delray Beach are peripheral at best,” said Mayor Cary Glickstein in early September. “There is very little Delray Beach can do to control what happens on that rail line.”
He’s right. Neither the express passenger line nor FEC freight trains need city approval before they can proceed.
Delray Beach has the most to lose, Glickstein said. “Delray’s downtown will be impacted like none other,” he said “You are bisecting the heart and soul of this city, the same can’t be said for other cities.”
Even so, he knows he has to be forward-thinking. His support would be contingent on three factors: Delray Beach does not spend any money to upgrade its crossings to quiet zones; a commuter passenger line could use the FEC tracks; and some of the FEC freight trains would move west to the CSX tracks.
At the Delray Beach workshop, Nick Uhren, executive director of the county’s Metropolitan Planning Organization, talked about $6.6 million in federal money available to upgrade FEC crossings into quiet zones. Not all of the crossings need to be upgraded, he said. The Federal Railroad Administration allows for an aggregate risk index for crossings in a certain area, in this case cities, where train horns would not be needed.
Taxpayer money pays for the equipment, Uhren said. The cities pay an additional $4,200 annually to maintain each crossing with added gates. Lantana would not see an increase, Boynton Beach would have to pay $4,200, and Delray Beach and Boca Raton would each pay $12,600 annually to maintain the extra gates.
“Construction work at the grade crossings will occur early 2015 through mid-2016,” All Aboard Florida said in an emailed statement.
Its representatives did not make an appearance before the Boca Raton City Council. They did make a presentation last year to the Federation of Boca Raton Homeowner Associations, which did not take a position on the express passenger rail service, according to Boca Raton Mayor Susan Haynie.
“More freight is coming on the FEC lines,” Haynie said. All Aboard Florida is double-tracking the line, making it safer for both types of traffic.
Some details gleaned from loan application
A glimpse at its Miami-West Palm Beach service was provided in a prospectus when All Aboard Florida floated $450 million in bonds to finance the double-tracking between those cities.
According to published reports, the West Palm Beach station would see 1,839 passengers board the train and another 1,987 leaving the train daily in 2019. A coach class ticket between Miami and West Palm Beach would start at $30 during the first year of service and climb to $31.84 in 2019.
The rail line also has applied for a $1.6 billion Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing loan through the Federal Railroad Administration, although it is not dependent on the money to proceed north of West Palm Beach, Soule said. With the loan application, the rail line had to provide a ridership study, fare schedule, environmental impact study of the area between West Palm Beach and the Orlando airport, as well as put up its tracks as collateral.
In addition, South Florida has received a total of $13.75 million in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery grants to connect the FEC corridor with the South Florida Rail Corridor (CSX tracks) in Miami-Dade County in the south and the Northwood area of West Palm Beach in the north.
The Hialeah connector will be finished in early 2016, said Amie Goddeau, mobility development manager for the Florida Department of Transportation’s District Four.
The full Northwood connection won’t be finished until 2019 because of the extra land needed, she said.
When those two connections are complete, some of the FEC freight trains could move over to the CSX tracks. More freight will be unloaded in Miami and Port Everglades after 2016, when the Panama Canal is expanded to allow transit for more and larger ships.
FEC currently operates 14 freight trains daily from Jacksonville to Miami, said Robert Ledoux, senior vice president of Florida East Coast Railway.
“It will grow incrementally,” he said. “Most of the trains going north are empty right now.” It could rise to 20 trains in five to six years, he said.
As to a commuter rail line using the FEC tracks, All Aboard Florida has signed a non-compete clause with Tri-Rail, Soule said. The Coastal Link service is “starting the environmental phase … with the Federal Transit Authority later this fall to finalize these station locations,” FDOT’s Goddeau said.
Boynton Beach plans for a station between Boynton Beach Boulevard and Ocean Avenue, according to Vivian Brooks, executive director of the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency. But she did not know who would pay for the station and how elaborate it would be and who would pay for the trains.
In Delray Beach, plans call for the Coastal Link station to be north of East Atlantic Avenue, between Northeast Second and Northeast Third avenues.
In Boca Raton, the preferred station location is near the city library on land where the Boca Raton Community Garden sits at 101 NW Fourth St., Haynie said.
Boca Raton is still deciding what kind of station it can afford, near the downtown area and north of Palmetto Park Road.
“Will it be an overhang and a walkway to get over the tracks, as they have at Yamato,” asked Mike Woika, assistant city manager, “or something more elaborate?”
Next year, when the cities can concentrate on the Coastal Link service, Haynie is confident a financial plan for the line will be found.
The start date of this commuter rail line service depends on finding the money to pay for the annual operations and maintenance costs, Goddeau said.
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