(The following column by Steve Dunham appeared at Fredericksburg.com on August 17. Mr. Dunham of Spotsylvania County commutes on Virginia Railway Express to Arlington. He chairs the board of directors of the Virginia Association of Railway Patrons.)
FREDERICKSBURG, Va. — Like Virginia Railway Express, Florida’s TriRail commuter rail system was created as an alternative to Interstate 95. Like VRE, TriRail shares its route with Amtrak trains and CSX freights, has been building more track capacity and still has trouble running on time.
On a visit to Miami earlier this month I was eager to check out TriRail and see how it compares with VRE.
The Florida Department of Transportation purchased the CSX line and established TriRail in 1989 as a transportation alternative during a five-year I-95 construction project. TriRail was operated by the Tri-County Commuter Rail Authority. By the time construction work was complete on I-95, TriRail was so popular that it was made a permanent part of the South Florida transportation network.
Congestion on the railroad was a problem, however. The CSX line purchased by TriRail was a single track with passing sidings. In 1995, Florida began a 12-year project to double-track the entire 72-mile railroad between West Palm Beach and the Miami airport to better accommodate passenger trains. During that time (in 2003), the three-county authority became the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority.
TriRail is unusual in that its main terminal is not in a city. It’s in an industrial area about a mile from the Miami International Airport terminal, reached by a free shuttle bus. (A future project may extend TriRail to a new intermodal transportation center at the airport itself.)
Many of TriRail’s passengers are going to or from the airport, and the lower level of each TriRail passenger car has large luggage racks in place of some seats. The airport traffic is encouraged by the frequent TriRail service: 50 weekday and 16 weekend trains.
Passengers traveling to or from downtown Miami (about 10 miles away) make a free transfer to the Miami metro.
Elsewhere, TriRail does go downtown, serving Hollywood, Fort Lauderdale, Deerfield Beach and other cities along the coast. This probably helps account for the high off-peak ridership. I rode a late-morning weekday train heading from the Miami airport toward West Palm Beach, and a good number of riders seemed to be getting on and off at each stop. The luggage racks were stuffed with the baggage of air and rail passengers (TriRail shares five stations with Amtrak).
Compared with VRE, TriRail has better service. It runs more trains on Sundays than the VRE Fredericksburg line has on weekdays. The fares are much cheaper: The highest one-way fare is $5.50, and a monthly pass for the whole line is only $80. (As on VRE, seniors and students pay half price.)
The cars are a variant of the Sounders that ran on VRE in recent years; the straight-back seats are a bit Spartan for a ride over the entire line, but every car has a restroom, and many of the stations do, too. The stations are handsome, mostly decorated in the pastels so common in South Florida architecture.
TriRail shares some of VRE’s problems, too. Even with the double-tracking complete, TriRail often runs late, and its communications have room for improvement. While I waited at the Miami airport station, I saw no information about the 10:45 a.m. arrival from West Palm Beach, which would become my 11 a.m. train going north. A “Next train” arrow pointed to one track, but the train finally pulled in on the other track 20 minutes late. The platform was between the tracks, though, so there was no mad scramble to reach the other track as sometimes happens with Amtrak trains at Fredericksburg. Up the line, at other stations, I did see announcements posted on the electronic signs above the platforms.
What TriRail could really use, though, is an extension to downtown. If it served the airport directly (the Miami metro doesn’t) and went downtown, too, then TriRail could end up with a recurring VRE problem: not enough capacity for everyone who wants to ride.