While Brightline is regarded by some as an emerging gold standard for higher speed train travel and a magnet for upscale development in South Florida, the line also has become a grim barometer for what the public and policy makers probably never envisioned: an alarming number of deaths and injuries at railroad crossings and along tracks.
Before it resumed service last November after a long COVID-induced hiatus, Brightline spent millions to upgrade its safety systems and launch a public awareness campaign. To say the results have been disappointing is an understatement.
On its first formal day of operations, an inaugural train traveling south from West Palm Beach struck a vehicle that attempted to cross the tracks ahead of the train in Pompano Beach. In the ensuing three months, there have been several more collisions between trains and vehicles along the 66.5-mile stretch of Florida East Coast Railway tracks between West Palm Beach and Miami.
A fatal crash Tuesday involving the privately owned passenger railroad was the ninth since it resumed operations in November, and the 57th since Brightline began test runs in 2017, giving it the worst per-mile fatality rate in the nation, according to an ongoing Associated Press analysis.
“It’s really in everyone’s interest to try to make sure this stops happening as soon as possible,” said Paul Lewis, policy director of the Eno Center for Transportation, an independent think tank in Washington, D.C.,
The impacts reach far beyond the loss of life and damage to property, said Kim Delany, director of strategic development and policy for the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, of which Palm Beach County is part. They take psychological tolls on train crew members, she said, as well as on first responders, and friends and family of the victims and beyond.
“That’s been a lot of tragedy for the region to live with, which is awful, and what has become obvious is if we could reduce trespassing, we’ll have a safer region,” Delany said.
The record does not bode well for a South Florida region that will be the scene of more local and regional train services between now and the end of the decade.
Many policymakers, executives and politicians have come to understand that it will take more programs, more money and better planning to combat the maddening behavior of motorists who try to beat trains across the tracks, or pedestrians who either blithely use train tracks as alternate foot paths, or worse, complete suicide by train.
That happened as recently as Saturday morning, when a man stepped in front of the train in Delray Beach.
Starting next year, Brightline, with trains that can travel between 81 and 125 mph, will be whisking passengers from Miami to Orlando, through the downtowns of Aventura, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton and West Palm Beach, along the Treasure Coast to Cocoa, and then west to Orlando International Airport. The line’s trains are currently permitted to travel at speeds of up to 79 mph along the FEC corridor, the same maximum speed as many commuter railroads across the U.S.
At some point around 2027, a “Coastal Link” rail service may be carrying local commuters among cities in Broward and Miami-Dade counties. The Broward part of the project is now under study by the Florida Department of Transportation.
And along the CSX line west of Interstate 95, Tri-Rail will likely be ferrying passengers not only between the West Palm Beach area and Miami International Airport, but to Brightline’s downtown MiamiCentral station as well.
The Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees safety regulations around the country, has taken notice. It has summoned the operators of Brightline, Tri-Rail, Amtrak, and CSX, whose north-south line runs along the west side of I-95, to a meeting in Boynton Beach next Wednesday to assess what communities and others are doing to deter accidents involving trespassers on tracks and motorists at crossings. Local elected officials and law enforcement authorities are also on the invitation list.
In a statement, an agency spokesperson said Brightline has not been found to have violated any rules in the wake of any of the accidents.
“It is important to point out that none of the tragic incidents involving grade crossings and trespassers resulted from the railroad’s failure to comply with federal regulations,” the agency said.
It also noted that communities themselves are part of the safety matrix and that federal money is available to help local police agencies enforce the laws and educate the public..
“We’ve helped fund multiple law enforcement agencies’ programs that successfully deter drivers and pedestrians making poor decisions along rail rights of way,” the FRA said. “These programs have also helped redirect those experiencing emotional distress to needed counseling services. We encourage law enforcement agencies along the Brightline corridor to apply for these grants and, when possible, to cite motorists for failing to obey state traffic safety laws.”
Dubious ranking
Florida ranks among the top five states in the nation for vehicle collisions, according to a study by the Eno Center for Transportation.
Lewis says there has been a national trend of more fatal incidents around the country since 2012. Prior to that, the number of incidents had been declining since the 1990s. He said he is aware of Brightline’s problems with fatal accidents, which he believes are attributable in part to the relative newness of the service.
“Some of it is people not used to having trains moving slightly faster,” Lewis said. “Perhaps they haven’t learned the travel patterns. Essentially, it is drivers trying to save themselves tenths of a second on their commutes.”
Of all the public and private operators of trains in South Florida, Brightline easily has led the pack in deadly accidents since it started service in 2018.
Tri-Rail, the 72-mile, 18-station commuter line that runs along I-95 from the West Palm Beach area to Miami International Airport, has had its trouble, too, but at a lower incident rate than Brightline’s. There have been no deaths thus far this year involving Tri-Rail trains. Six were recorded last year — one at a crossing and the others involving people walking along the tracks.
The highest number of fatalities in the last five years came in 2017, with two deaths at crossings and 12 involving trespassers.
At one point, the company tested drones as a means of monitoring its tracks, but the idea was temporarily shelved after the FAA updated its regulations to require certified pilots as operators. Tri-Rail doesn’t have any on staff.
Steven L. Abrams, the Tri-Rail executive director whose headquarters is in Pompano Beach, acknowledged that erratic drivers and trespassers pose problems that are hard to control.
“[People] just don’t see the trains, and they don’t see how fast the trains go,” he said.
Erratic behaviors
Nonetheless, drivers and pedestrians continue to take unfathomable risks.
Abrams has a front-row seat to the dangerous conduct.
“My office overlooks our corridor and there is not a day that goes by when there isn’t someone strolling up the tracks using it as a shortcut,” Abrams said. “You have the impatient driver at the crossing. You have someone using it as a path. You have the unfortunate suicides. It’s very unpredictable.”
One day at the Deerfield Beach station, Abrams recalled, he witnessed two men on opposite sides of the station meet in the middle of the tracks so that one could light a cigarette for the other.
From his office, he also watched an elderly woman, with the aid of a walker, navigate around a lowered crossing gate.
What to do about it
Executives and analysts agree that railroad operators and government planners have a long-term problem on their hands.
On Nov. 21, Brightline installed two cameras at two crossings in Miami-Dade County to track motorists skirting around closed gates, said spokesman Ben Porritt.
To date, there have been 812 infractions, and Brightline has been sending letters to the homes of offenders warning them that what they are doing is illegal and dangerous.
Porritt said Brightline is working with law enforcement to implement fines.
“This is an unusual situation,” said Gregory Stuart, executive director of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization, which sets transportation policies for the county and seeks federal money to fund them.
There are more than 300 railroad crossings in a tri-county region that is populated by 6 million people, Stuart said.
He argues that more local, state and federal government involvement and money are needed to enhance public awareness and tighten security around railroad properties. Even developers, he said, should be kicking in money to help pay for fencing and other measures in places where they are building residential and mixed-use projects along the tracks or in nearby neighborhoods.
“Most urbanized areas are separated [from trains,]” Stuart said. “We aren’t.”
He suggested a surge in transit-oriented development, which has meant new building projects and more people living and doing businesses near the Florida East Coast rail line, is going to pose bigger challenges for keeping people away from the trains.
“The bigger questions we have to be looking at is what has the investing been so far and the things that are happening in the corridor as well,” he said. “As soon as that starts, there are going to be more opportunities for more people to get in front of an oncoming train.”
“We have to get in front of that.”
Many are trying.
“We are well aware of these Brightline accidents and obviously that is of great concern,” said Chris McVoy, a city commissioner in Lake Worth Beach, where two of the four Brightline crashes over four days last week occurred. McVoy also serves on the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency.
The agency has been working to secure funding so county governments and cities can pay for additional safety measures at railroad crossings since Brightline, first known as All Aboard Florida, announced its Miami-to-Orlando route plan.
An end to quiet zones?
Several years ago, as the certainty grew that Brightline would become a reality, communities besieged elected commissioners, city managers, mayors and the media with concerns that a stream of fast trains running through densely populated areas would bring a steady chorus of train horns from before dawn to late at night.
Therefore, many worked to establish quiet zones, effectively silencing the warning horns sounded by locomotives and thus removing an important safety measure. In the end, the entire stretch of the Brightline route between Miami and West Palm Beach became a quiet zone.
“There was a lot of effort to make quiet zones,” McVoy said. “Obviously, they are not 100%.”
The Federal Railroad Administration approved them.
In non-quiet zones, federal law requires slower trains to sound horns a few times with long and short bursts at least 15 seconds and no more than 20 seconds from reaching the crossing. Higher-speed trains, like Brightline, must sound the horns within a quarter-mile of a crossing.
There are exceptions that allow for horns to be sounded within quiet zones because of perceived dangers on the tracks. The challenge is with higher-speed trains like Brightline, it can take about a quarter mile to stop a train.
Before silencing the horns, various city and county engineers had to work with railroad engineers to enhance the railroad crossings with other safety measures.
That meant adding lights, warning bells and signs, rumble strips to slow traffic, and installing road medians to deter impatient motorists from driving around cars stopped at crossing gates.
Cities and counties could take even greater steps by installing multiple gates to stop motorists and deter pedestrians from crossing the tracks as trains approach. But those measures are costly and can run as much as $500,000.
A typical railroad crossing has what are called entry gates that block motorists and pedestrians from entering the lane of traffic over the tracks. Those gates do not extend across the entire width of the road, but rather, there is one on each side of the crossing.
All too often in South Florida, motorists use this open space in the opposite lane of travel to try to beat the trains. All too often, the maneuvers have proven to be deadly.
That’s why Jupiter intends to have four quadrant crossings at each of its six railroad crossings — two entry gates and two exit gates when Brightline trains start to pass through town.
Currently there are four crossings that have been completed with the four gates, said town engineer C.J. Land.
Only about a third of the nearly 180 crossings along Brightline’s current route have four gates.
Barring enhancements, and in the wake of the recent Brightline deaths, members of the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency met Thursday and raised the possibility that the end of quiet zones could be near.
The reasoning: A horn could stop motorists from circumventing smaller crossing gates.
“I’m not sure a horn would do a lot of good — but maybe,” said McVoy of Lake Worth Beach.
He’s hoping there can be a balance.
“These [crashes] are obviously extremely unfortunate,” McVoy said. “I cannot encourage people enough to be extremely careful at the crossings; to be patient and to be aware that Brightline is coming.”
“Wait for the dust to settle and the arms to raise.”
Staff writer Brooke Baitinger contributed to this report.
Eileen Kelley can be reached at 772-925-9193 or ekelley@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Twitter @reporterkell.
