For long-suffering, car-bound commuters who reside in western Broward and Palm Beach counties, the specter of direct Tri-Rail service to downtown Miami may no longer be a mirage.
The rail line’s operating agency announced Friday that the three-county commuter rail service will start test runs along the line that will enable its trains to operate in and out of the MiamiCentral station now exclusively used by Brightline.
The testing, which will start Monday and run through next Friday, will take Tri-Rail trains along an 8-mile, east-west segment of the Florida East Coast Railway that cuts across central Miami-Dade County from a state-owned rail line west of Interstate 95 used by Tri-Rail, Amtrak and CSX.
Susan Stocker / Sun Sentinel
A Tri-Rail train stops at Pompano Beach. which is where the commuter railroad’s operating headquarters are located. The line will start testing trains to downtown Miami on Monday.
Long road
“The day has arrived where the first Tri-Rail train will run directly into Downtown Miami and into the MiamiCentral Station for testing, thanks to the great partnership we have established with FEC and Brightline,” said Commissioner Raquel Regalado, governing board chair of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority. “This is yet another momentous occasion marking the progress of the work that has been in the making for a very long time.”
Tri-Rail did not offer a date for when paying passengers can board its trains for a direct ride to downtown Miami. But a spokesman said the rail line’s top executive, David Dech, intends make a startup happen “as soon as possible now that we’ve gotten through this major hurdle.”
Tri-Rail started in 1989 as a temporary commuter rail service designed to provide alternative transportation to drivers during widening projects for I-95 and Florida’s Turnpike.
But as South Florida’s population grew and its roads became more crowded, Tri-Rail continued operations. It now serves 18 stations with Mangonia Park above West Palm Beach as its northernmost point, and Miami International Airport as its southern terminus.
Service upgrades
The testing to downtown Miami is yet another step for the more than three-decade-old train line toward service modernization and expansion.
Recently, the SFRTA announced a $71.4 million grant to refurbish the railroad’s fleet with the acquisition of new passenger cars and locomotives.
Up until now, MiamiCentral has been the exclusive domain of Brightline, the higher speed rail line that intends to start service to Orlando this summer. Brightline kicked off in 2018, initially serving the downtowns of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, and last fall, opening station stops at Aventura and Boca Raton.
But Brightline was not designed as a local commuter service for middle- and lower-income working people; its ticket prices are considerably higher than Tri-Rail’s.