The panel’s final instruction to staff went nowhere: No north county cities stepped up to agree in writing to offer “local funding options,” although Palm Beach Gardens has approved a mobility fee.Ī worker digs a trench Jan. Until these issues are resolved, the hop-on-board support needed to spend taxpayer money in such a big way can’t leave the station.Ī steering committee assigned to the task last met in February 2018 before acknowledging the difficulty of overcoming those unresolved issues and shutting down.
Oh, and the cost to actually run the trains could be as high as $19 million a year, a figure fares alone will not cover.
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Two hurdles could derail this north county expansion: The rail service doesn’t have permission from Brightline to operate on the FEC tracks and Palm Beach County has not begun negotiating a price.Īnd, more critically, local officials haven’t figured out how to pay for the rest of the project, particularly new stations and new sidings at a price of more than $100 million. The FEC is the easternmost line that, unlike CSX, rolls right through north county cities and towns. They’re encouraged by two recent developments: the double-tracking happening now on the easternmost Florida East Coast Railway tracks, courtesy of the long-haul passenger service Brightline, and the recent completion of a $4.2 million crossover in West Palm Beach to let Tri-Rail trains switch seamlessly from the CSX rail line to the FEC. That hasn’t stopped transportation advocates from pushing the link. In fact, the rail line is still hundreds of millions of dollars away from actually delivering.
Officials have been looking forward to this moment for decades to make good on a promise of delivering commuter rail to north county.īut there’s still a big hurdle in making a short-stop coastal commuter rail service real: Money. For the first time since its inception in 1989, Tri-Rail is physically able to run its trains from Miami all the way through Palm Beach Gardens to Jupiter.
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