Brightline Rolls Into Miami Amid Safety Concerns

AVENTURA, FL — The intersection was clearly marked: "Do not stop on tracks." Yet it took only a few minutes to spot drivers who failed to heed the warning or didn't notice it at all. There was the red car stretched across two sets of tracks, the white one that didn't quite have enough room to squeeze past the second set and surprisingly, a Miami-Dade Transit bus — all jockeying for a risky advantage in the evening commute along busy Biscayne Boulevard.

Patch found no shortage of drivers during a recent evening rush hour playing this dangerous game of cat and mouse only days before Saturday's official expansion of the "higher speed" Brightline service into Miami.

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"There’s nothing you can do to avoid it. It’s kind of just stupidity," acknowledged Mike Callanan, a former Amtrak conductor who spent nine years working for the railroad, including a stint on its high-speed Acela line. Reaching speeds up to 150-miles-per-hour, the Acela is the fastest train in either North or South America.

While the expansion of the only privately funded inter-city train service in the United States clearly ushers in a new era of transportation for car-dependent South Florida, it also brings with it new challenges from a safety perspective.

"There’s so many intersections down here. It's just an easy way for a train to hit a car or a pedestrian because the pedestrians can just come in and out," Callanan told Patch. "There’s really no control over the property."

There have already been at least six deaths since the service began its testing on Florida East Coast Railway tracks late last year From West Palm Beach to Fort Lauderdale. At least half of the victims had drugs in their systems, according to the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner's Office.

One of the victims was 51-year-old Jeffrey King, whose death was captured on surveillance video released by the Boynton Beach Police Department. King was found to have a combination of drugs in his system though it was unclear how much of a role that played in his decision to wage a losing battle with the fast train.

Watch below as King is struck by the Brightline train.

Miami poses even more challenges as Brightline makes 16 daily runs through densely populated areas like Aventura and North Miami en route to and from the new Brightline MiamiCentral Station at 600 NW 1st Ave.

The train will hit speeds of 79-miles-per-hour between Miami and West Palm but will reach speeds of up to 125-miles-per-hour once the final stop at Orlando International Airport is added in the future. The fastest speed will be on the stretch between Cocoa and Orlando International where Brightline plans to construct 40 miles of new grade separated track.

That is a far cry from the noisy and heavy cargo trains that have had the more than 100-year-old Florida East Coast railway tracks to themselves since the late 1960s. The cargo trains reach maximum speeds of about 60 miles per hour and are much louder than the Brightline trains.

"Pedestrians and vehicle operators have to understand the speed of these Brightline trains are faster than what they are used to seeing with the FEC trains," explained Sgt. Chris Goranitis of the Aventura Police Department.

According to data maintained by the U.S. government, four of the Brightline fatalities occurred between late last year and the end of February.

The Federal Railroad Administration in Washington, D.C., shows that Brightline reported a total of five nonfatal accidents/incidents during the same time period. Agency officials told Patch there is a reporting lag of several months.

"You are not allowed to cross the tracks anywhere other than designated crossing areas," Goranitis added. "The concern is with individuals who walk on and around the tracks or try to cross in non-designated areas. In addition to being illegal and trespassing, it is dangerous."

Callanan fears that Florida's new "higher speed" Brightline trains will almost certainly take some South Florida pedestrians and motorists by surprise — with disastrous consequence.

At 500 feet in length and operating at maximum speeds of 79 miles per hour, the new trains take roughly three to five minutes to pass. It takes 45 seconds for the crossing gates to come down and go back up.

The typical Brightline train requires nearly an entire mile before it can come to a complete stop, while cargo trains need more than a mile.

"You might not hear it, and the engineer going that fast doesn’t have time to stop," Callanan asserted.

When he began working for Amtrak, the trains were nothing like the sleek new Brightline trains or the Acelas.

"They’re loud. They’re diesel," he said of earlier trains. "You either have time to get out of the way or the Amtrak engineer has time to stop the train as opposed to these."

Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez insist that the benefits outweigh the risks to ease the daily automotive gridlock in South Florida by removing as many as three million cars from Florida roadways, according to Brightline estimates, which have been questioned by some.

“As Brightline rolls out its fast and reliable service, we are taking proactive steps to ensure public safety," assured Suarez ahead of the start of service into the Magic City. "I look forward to seeing Brightline in Miami and how our residents will benefit from this alternative to car travel.”

Miami-Dade's Gimenez said the county has taken steps to manage the added risk.

"We are putting more safety officers along key crossings to ensure people follow the rules, but ultimately it’s up to each resident to not take risks to bypass the train,” Gimenez said.

“These trains are faster than what you’ve normally experienced in the past,” Gimenez warned. “So if you thought that you had time before — you may have had time before — but you don’t have time now ... Anything that happens between a train and yourself, I guarantee you’re gonna be a loser.”

Brightline has launched its own public safety education and awareness campaign through Operation Lifesaver, a group that aims to reduce accidents near railroad tracks.

Brightline's aggressive outreach campaign includes:

• Placing signs at high traffic crossings
• Airing public service announcements on Creole radio as well as English and Spanish radio
• Deploying safety ambassadors to railroad-roadway crossings to educate drivers and pedestrians about rail safety
• Hosting training sessions for first responders
• Distributing more than 12,000 pieces of literature to schools along the FEC Railway/Brightline corridor throughout Miami-Dade County and even more when you include schools in Broward and Palm Beach Counties
• Training Brightline employees as Operation Lifesaver volunteers

Despite these efforts, local officials are crossing their fingers in a very real sense. There are a number of school children and adults who regularly use the tracks as a shortcut to work or school. In some cases, this risky maneuver saves them as much as 40 minutes from their travel time.

"In the Northeast Corridor where they run these high speed trains, there aren’t any road crossings," Callanan explained. "So there’s virtually no access to the tracks, not unless you sneak through a fence of something like that."

During his career, Callanan said he was on three trains that killed people. He still remembers each of the deaths.

They're hard to forget.

"You'll never forget it," he explained, adding that many victims of train accidents intentionally try to take their own lives. But that doesn't make it any less traumatic for the people who work on trains. They are usually among the first people to reach the victims.

"We’ve had engineers that killed people and they never come back to work. They’re done," said Callanan, who also served on Amtrak's safety committee and now works as a consultant. "I can’t imagine hitting somebody in the front of the cab and you are staring right at them."

Click here for Brightline ticketing information.

Photo gallery by Paul Scicchitano. Video courtesy Boynton Beach Police Department.