Construction on railroad tracks and crossings for the Virgin Trains USA passenger rail expansion is to start this year on the Treasure Coast, company officials said Friday.
“I think this year, absolutely, but we’re just saying imminent at this point,” said Michael Hicks, a Virgin Trains USA spokesman, about the construction kickoff on the Treasure Coast.
Virgin Trains USA anticipates zipping 32 trains per day through the Treasure Coast at 110 mph when passenger service between Orlando and West Palm Beach starts in 2022. The passenger service started running last year between West Palm Beach and Miami.
Florida East Coast Railway tracks and crossings will be upgraded from West Palm Beach to Cocoa to handle the passenger trains, Virgin Trains USA said May 21. The work includes the construction of a second main track and the replacement of 19 bridges. New tracks will be constructed along State Road 528 between Cocoa and Orlando International Airport.
Meanwhile, St. Lucie County officials have been working with train company and state transportation officials on safety enhancements for the county’s 22 railroad crossings and roughly 35 miles of track. “In talking with representatives from Virgin, staff has felt that we have made good progress to lessen the safety concerns as well as any financial impacts the high-speed rail would have on our county,” said St. Lucie County spokesman Erick Gill. “But until we see the specific plans, it’s hard to definitively say.”
Several local governments on the Treasure and Space coasts have called upon FDOT to develop plans to improve the safety of the Virgin Trains USA passenger rail.
St. Lucie Village, population 600, last month asked FDOT to provide a full range of safety enhancements at the town’s seven crossings, including vehicle presence detection, and fencing along the tracks.
“The majority of our residents are at great risk of injury and death due to the lack of safety mechanisms at these grade crossings which they must traverse a few times a day,” Town Attorney Richard V. Neill Jr. wrote in an April 11 letter. “These crossings are the only ingress and egress to our homes.”
“St. Lucie Village is a very small municipality and does not have the financial resources to pay for proper security and safety measures at those crossings,” Neill said. “So we are dependent on FDOT to fulfill its jurisdictional duties.”
The Brevard County Commission and Grant-Valkaria Town Council both passed resolutions in the past two months supporting state Sen. Debbie Mayfield’s efforts to convince FDOT to regulate Virgin Trains USA passenger rail.
An Oct. 31, 2018, report by the state Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability identified gaps in safety and operational regulations for trains traveling between 80 mph and 125 mph.
The report indicated several states have laws requiring fencing along railroad tracks, said Indian River County Attorney Dylan Reingold. Florida could follow suit.
Indian River County has been the fiercest critic of the Virgin Trains USA project and has legal challenges pending in state and federal courts.
But FDOT Secretary Kevin Thibault rejected public calls for fencing along the entire the length of the Virgin Trains USA tracks.
In an April 18 letter to Mayfield, Thibault cited “concerns that this action would be subject to issues with legal authority for right of way and private property ownership.”
Mayfield (R-Melbourne) could not immediately be reached for comment about FDOT’s response.
An aide, Adrienne Cronebaugh, told the Brevard County Commission Mayfield is still working to get FDOT to address shortcomings in federal and state regulations governing trains traveling below 125 mph, such as Virgin Trains USA.
So far, 16 people have died in mishaps on the tracks since passenger trains started in January 2018, published reports show.
But the OPPAGA report also noted most of the deaths on railroad tracks in recent years involved suicidal people and were outside of the railroad company’s control, said Rusty Roberts, Virgin Trains USA’s vice president for government affairs.
“Safety is ‘Mission 1’ for the Virgin Trains project,” Roberts told the Brevard County Commission. “There have been zero deaths, zero incidents that have been caused by a malfunction of our gate system, signaling system or the trains.
“We have taken a lot of lessons learned from our operation in South Florida and we’re actually adding additional safety measures in South Florida to find a way to reduce these deaths,” Roberts said.
Virgin Trains USA worked with the Federal Railroad Administration and FDOT to design the railroad crossing upgrades for the passenger train project, Roberts said.
“FDOT and FRA worked hand in hand with us in every county and every municipality on a crossing by crossing diagnostic review to determine what are the best safety measures to put at each crossing,” Roberts said. “And then we worked with local public works directors and city and county engineers to figure out what more we could do.”
Virgin Trains USA anticipates starting passenger rail service between Orlando and West Palm Beach in early 2022, Roberts said Friday in an interview.
Virgin Trains USA announced last week it contracted HSR Constructors, a joint venture of three top railroad and transit builders, for most of the work between West Palm Beach and Cocoa. They are Herzog Railroad Services of St. Joseph, Missouri; Stacy and Witbeck of Alameda, California; and RailWorks of New York.
The other major component of the West Palm Beach to Orlando expansion is the construction of 35 miles of new tracks alongside State Road 528 between Cocoa and Orlando International Airport. That will be built by Granite Construction Inc., of Watsonville, California.
The entire passenger train project is expected to cost $4 billion, Virgin Trains USA said in a May 21 statement.
