Tri-Rail system outage causing ‘major delays’

All Tri-Rail trains are experiencing heavy delays Tuesday evening after a system outage, according to the company’s tracking website.

“A signal issue” with the dispatch system has stopped all traffic on the tracks, Victor Garcia, director of public affairs for Tri-Rail, said in an email.

Officials are trying to figure out the cause and get a backup system running.

Garcia said the outage is affecting all train traffic, including Amtrak and CSX freight, on the tracks west of Interstate 95.

It is unclear when the trains will be back up and running, but buses are being arranged to take passengers from station to station.

“This will cause for major delays for this evening’s commute,” Garcia wrote.

Jason Santos, 42, takes a Tri-Rail train from the Lake Worth station to the Fort Lauderdale area each day for work. Santos said he caught the train at the Cypress Creek station, and the train slowly pulled away from the station for about two minutes, then stopped.

The train didn’t move for at least an hour, he said, before moving to the Pompano Beach station where passengers were told to get off.

“There was well over 100 people sitting on the platform waiting for a train,” Santos said.

Finally, he decided to ditch the train and take an Uber with others who were stuck waiting to Lake Worth Beach. He typically would have been home about three hours earlier, he said.

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