The railroads that serve South Florida are in a fight to keep motorists and pedestrians out of harm’s way.
The U.S. government is more than willing to help, pouring millions into education programs and crossing redesign projects requested by area cities and towns.
On June 8, Broward County transportation planners, mayors and other elected officials celebrated a $15.4 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration for a so-called “sealed” rail corridor project. It is designed to upgrade safety measures at 21 rail crossings in the county. Nationally, more than 400 crossings nationwide will be targeted for $570 million in improvements where tracks and roads intersect. Fort Lauderdale, as well as West Palm Beach in Palm Beach County, received six-figure grants to conduct studies that could lead to more safety measures.
For reasons that continue to flummox the train operators, government officials and law enforcement, people keep dying at South Florida rail crossings along the Florida East Coast Railway corridor, which is also served by the Brightline higher speed passenger line, and at crossings along state-owned tracks paralleling Interstate 95 that are used by Tri-Rail, the CSX freight line and Amtrak.
“It’s a very, very complicated issue,” said FRA Deputy Administrator Jennifer Mitchell, who visited from Washington to announce the federal awards. “I don’t know that anybody fully understands why people choose to try to beat a train when they see it coming. Usually, if they will just sit and wait a few minutes they’ll have an opportunity to cross safely.”
“There is research under way,” she added. “We’ll continue to learn from that. We hope that grants like this one where we have the opportunity to improve crossings so we can prohibit people from making those kinds of risky decisions will help. We hope people will learn. We think there is a lot of room for public education on this topic, too, and we would love to see more “
But federal regulators have emphasized that while they’re willing to throw millions at the problem — most recently through the Biden Administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure program — the onus is on localities to identify where the problems exist and to make arrangements to fix them.
High stakes
Mayors and other public officials who gathered at the grant’s unveiling at the headquarters of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization acknowledged they need the safety upgrades because of a surge in population, transit-oriented development and an expansion of train operations along the South Florida coast.
This summer, Brightline intends to launch its service from South Florida to Orlando, with 32 trains daily running between Central Florida and Miami. Last fall, the company added stations at Boca Raton and Aventura, increasing the number of stops it already has in the downtowns of Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and Miami. The Florida East Coast Railway operates a robust daily freight service into South Florida along its century-old 351-mile corridor that is partially used by Brightline. And Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties all have designs on the establishment of a separate Coastal Link commuter service that would serve multiple cities in the region.
The passenger services, which include Tri-Rail and Amtrak along the state-owned rail line that runs west of I-95, are all viewed by local governments as a prime method for removing cars from overburdened South Florida highways. On Friday, Tri-Rail announced it would start running tests for its long-proposed service into downtown Miami.
“All of our downtowns are flourishing,” said Hollywood Mayor Josh Levy. “All of them are situated along this rail corridor. That artery that also — never mind just Broward County but also Miami-Dade County, Palm Beach and all the way north — this centralization of our density and ability to build downtowns along this corridor is key for Broward County.
“Pompano Beach is doing so much. Hallandale is building along Dixie Highway The Dixie Highway of yesteryear is no more,” Levy added. “And in Hollywood that is the case as well. Our downtown is situated right there. There used to be a passenger rail line decades ago after Henry Flagler built that railroad a hundred years ago.
“It’s coming back now,” Levy said.” We’ve got over 3,000 (residential) units coming in. We’re excited about the connectivity that commuter rail is going to bring to those people that are going to live in our downtowns.
“We’re already making mega investments both public and private in Hollywood for when that train comes, and I hear that it’s going to come earlier than we all think and we should all be excited about that to service South Broward County,’ he added.
But the growth of passenger train service raises the prospects of more safety headaches in the region — including clashes between trains and vehicles at crossings.
Which programs work the best?
The local officials who gathered for the grant announcement at the headquarters of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, were joined virtually from Washington by local members of Congress, including Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, Jared Moscowitz and Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick.
“Like all of you, I want safer speedier travel and reduced commute times in South Florida,” Wasserman Schultz told the group. “I’m tired of reading on the local news about yet another traffic accident at a rail crossing. A safer South Florida requires an across-government effort at every level. The Broward MPO, Broward County, Dania Beach. Deerfield Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Hallandale Beach, Hollywood, Oakland Park, Pompano Beach and Wilton Manors all stepped up and worked collaboratively to secure this funding.”
Mark Randall / Sun Sentinel
In another sign of South Florida rail expansion, Tri-Rail is about to start testing a segment in Miami-Dade County that would take passengers to downtown Miami. (South Florida Sun Sentinel file)
Broward County, she noted, has experienced the highest number of train-vehicle incidents at rail crossings “of any county in the inter-city passenger rail service area.”
“Thirty-five percent of those accidents were caused by vehicles driving around railroad entrance gates and getting struck by a train,” Wasserman Schultz said.
Gregory Stuart, executive director of the Broward MPO, which helps set county transportation priorities and acquire federal funding for them, said there is a need for more local educational initiatives to keep people safe.
And he served up this confession:
“For those of us who grew up here in Southeast Florida, and I am one of them, I used to walk across the tracks — I hate to say this, but I did — to middle high school,” Stuart said.
“And that was just the reality of it,” he added. “It was double track at the time in the city I grew up in and it was Boca Raton — and I would walk to my school in the morning and I would walk back home in the afternoon. I didn’t know I was trespassing. I didn’t have any education or idea that that was actually something you shouldn’t do.”
In an interview with the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Stuart said his agency’s recently activated “Don’t Risk It” program, which urges people to be cautious around rail crossings, was generated by driver impatience.
“It’s the ones who are impatient,” he said. “That’s where we came up with the ‘Don’t Risk It’ campaign. It was built around the behaviors of folks. How do you help somebody that is making irrational decisions?”
Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis asserted that removing crossings from the equation would add to safety and used the MPO meeting as an opportunity to promote his campaign for a tunnel underneath the New River for Brightline, FEC and Coastal Link trains.
“I see this as a first step toward more transformational infrastructure commitments,” he told Mitchell of the FRA.
“This is an opportunity for us to see how a tunnel project we are proposing would play right into this theme of trying to take traffic away from the interaction with the trains,” he said.
The FRA, which regulates the nation’s railroads and which is part of the U.S. Department of Transportation, has spent decades troubleshooting and trying to abate motorist and pedestrian encroachment upon the country’s rail corridors.
Its research efforts, which are designed to provide a basis for safety programs, date back to the 1970s.
Root causes
An FRA official, speaking on background, said studies have shown the behaviors of motorists involved in rail crossing collisions reflect those of pedestrians who trespass on railroad property. And impatience is one of those factors that result in drivers “not obeying warning devices and violating an active crossing.”
“The most common reason why an individual may trespass is that it is the most direct route to their destination,” the official said. “In many of these cases, the railroad tracks are familiar to the trespassers and have been used by others in their communities. Furthermore, increased risk may be due to the individual being distracted by another activity such as using headphones/earbuds or hunting, exercising, or riding all-terrain vehicles.”
Mitchell, the FRA deputy administrator, said “increased enforcement” by police who write tickets to crossing violators “definitely” has helped curb incidents.
“We know there is a program here in Florida several months ago where they did step up enforcement and that does have a big impact on changing people’s behavior,” she said, referring to a program led by the Broward Sheriff’s Office. “We are always encouraging our law enforcement departments to look at increasing enforcement where they can.”
The Broward Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Starr Kidda, engineering psychologist in the FRA’s human factors division, said the agency “has determined that the root causes of trespass, suicides, and motorist incursions are localized and that they must be addressed at the local levels.”
In responses to emailed questions from the South Florida Sun Sentinel, she acknowledged that confusion, defiance, anger and frustration over delays at crossings carry “the potential to introduce risk at a highway-rail grade crossing and may contribute to driver incursions or result in drivers circumventing warning devices.”
But ultimately, it will take local government initiatives, fueled by federal dollars, to make crossings safer, official say.
Stuart, who admitted crossing tracks on the way to school, said a recent fencing program along a segment of the FEC tracks between Searstown and Northeast Third Avenue in Fort Lauderdale is paying dividends.
“In a particularly difficult area between Searstown and Third there were lots of pedestrians crossing the tracks in that area,” he said. “And the fencing that’s there now actually channels them to where they should be going across. Is it a perfect solution? No. But I’m sure the mayor with their grant will look at what’s going to be happening there.”
Stuart was right about the fencing impact.
Early last Thursday afternoon, three pedestrians were observed safely walking across the tracks at the controlled crossing where three sets of FEC tracks intersect with Third Avenue.
Because of the fencing on both sides, the pedestrians had no other choice.