For decades, Miami-Dade County has planned to build a coastal commuter train service along tracks owned by Florida East Coast Railway to provide much-needed local public transportation to its traffic-weary residents. The route, parallel to Biscayne Boulevard, is a key part of the county’s Strategic Miami Area Rapid Transit plan — or SMART plan.
Since 2022, Miami-Dade has been negotiating with Brightline Trains, the private passenger rail company that operates higher-speed trains on Florida East Coast Railway (FECR) tracks from Miami to Orlando. The broad plan is to use existing FECR tracks to connect Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties in a transit corridor known as “Coastal Link.”
“ We have been working for several years on a project called the Coastal Link. Essentially what we’re doing is we are providing the excess capacity in our network to Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach County so that they can operate a commuter system,” Brightline CEO Patrick Goddard said at an economic forum in Miami last October…