Three things South Floridians can be certain of in 2018: death, taxes and high-speed passenger trains. All Aboard Florida’s Brightline launched service between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale on Jan. 13, and within the next couple of months, the $3.5 billion enterprise will begin construction on Phase 2 of their project through the Treasure Coast, with a projected deadline of 2020.
The company, now the only privately owned and operated passenger rail service in the country, has met with opposition since Phase 1 (Miami to West Palm Beach) construction began in 2014. Chief concerns include traffic, safety, environmental, and economic impact, leading several Treasure Coast counties to challenge the venture’s environmental and safety permits, as well as funding apparatus.
Now, after two recent fatalities and one injury in its first week of operation, the focus is on safety. On Jan. 12, during a VIP preview trip when the company toured reporters, local officials, and others down the completed WPB/Fort Lauderdale corridor, a 32 year-old pedestrian was struck and killed in Boynton Beach. Five days later and only five blocks away, a 51-year-old bicyclist was killed by a Brightline train. Another pedestrian was struck and injured in Fort Lauderdale Friday, but was not killed. These tragedies bring the Brightline-related death toll to four fatalities since last summer, and have caused an urgent spike in safety concern among citizens and legislators alike.
Congressman Brian Mast, a longtime opponent of Brightline, has called for cessation of the train routes until further safety reviews can be conducted. Last week Mast lobbied the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee to hold an oversight hearing to assess high-speed rail safety regulations. Until such review is complete, Mast has also asked the feds to suspend a $1.5 billion Private Activity Bond, approved by the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) last December.
In addition, Florida U.S. Sens. Bill Nelson and Marco Rubio have sent letters to Elaine Chao, DOT secretary, asking the department to review safety regulations for high-speed trains.
Except for one incident last July, which was investigated as a suicide, local police have ruled that each casualty was an example of pedestrians “trying to beat the train,” and that Brightline was not at fault. Nonetheless, the increased speeds and higher frequency of the new trains beg the question of an avoidable pattern.
George Gavalla of Triad Railroad Consulting says that it can often be impossible for citizens to determine the speed of large, quickly-moving vehicles: “What’s very difficult for people to understand — and I don’t think the railroad industry has done a very good job of educating people on this issue — is that the human senses are not reliable for detecting speed or distance of a train. There’s a phenomenon that’s very well studied and reported on by the Transportation Research Board, that says the larger an object is, the slower it appears to be moving, and the farther it appears to be. So, pedestrians and motorists at crossings will look down a track and may see a train. They’ll think it’s farther away than it is, and slower than it is. They’ll say, ‘I see the train coming, but I have time to walk across the tracks here.’”
In addition to this general miscalculation, Gavalla says the population density and prevalence of at-grade crossings in South Florida add to the factors that lead to crossing incidents. For the last year, while St. Lucie County engaged in an administrative review of Brightline’s Environmental Resources Permit for Phase 2 construction, Gavalla served as the county’s main safety adviser. Throughout the process of the review, the county was able to hold the train company accountable for augmented safety measures which include four-quadrant gates at most of the road crossings, pedestrian gates and state-of-the-art technologies which aid in vehicle and faulty signal detection.
Unfortunately, where pedestrian gates are installed is often determined by the railroad and not local communities, and the new technologies alone would not prevent pedestrian casualties, says Gavalla. He adds that going forward, more attention should be paid to areas that are known to have high pedestrian traffic, and whether they are adequately safeguarded. In the last year, Brightline explicitly proposed two pedestrian crossings in St. Lucie County, at the Midway and Walton Road junctions, though it’s still unclear who will pay for them.
From January to October 2017, 332 crossing incidents in Florida were reported to the Federal Railroad Administration. This is about 4 percent of all incidents nation-wide. Pedestrian fatalities involving trains in Florida were 35, nearly 7 percent of train-related pedestrian fatalities across the country. No pedestrian incidents occurred in St. Lucie County, though seven pedestrian fatalities occurred in Palm Beach County.
This could all change with the advent of faster, more frequent trains, says Gavalla. For the most part, the crossings in place were designed for freight traffic, where speeds average around 35 mph. “Those crossings were put in to meet the risks of lightly traveled, slow-speed freight railroad. The question is: Have they been upgraded enough to accommodate the risk to pedestrians? I think that’s a question that needs to be investigated further.” While trains south of West Palm Beach will not travel faster than 79 mph, trains between West Palm Beach and Orlando can reach up to 125 mph.
In light of the recent tragedies, Brightline has begun to install numerous precautionary signs along their Phase 1 track, and has hosted several informative meetings in local communities to address public safety.
At press time, there is no further update on the requested legislative hearings.
Article by: Adam Laten Willson
