Train from Miami isn’t coming to OIA till ’17

Issues force project to be split into 2 phases

The planned All Aboard Florida train will not be pulling into Orlando until May or June 2017, likely a half year or more behind the system’s startup in South Florida.

All Aboard Florida President Michael Reininger said Tuesday that the $2.5 billion project has been broken into two phases, with a 60-mile-plus section opening first in late 2016 in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

All Aboard Florida officials originally announced their project in March 2012, saying they hoped to be up and running by 2014. But a variety of issues have delayed it, including negotiating a lease for land along the Beach-Line Expressway and complet---

ing a federal environmental study.

The main holdup in Orlando is the construction of a depot and other associated projects at Orlando International Airport, the northern terminus of the 240-mile route, Reininger said.

Thatwork, which includes a mile-long people mover and parking garage, should take 33 months to complete, said Orlando International Director Phil Brown. Contracts could be negotiated and signed next month, he said.

The biggest obstacle at the airport, Brown said, is the proposed shuttle system that would link the airport terminal a mile to the north with the depot. The six cars, costing an estimated $75 million, must be built to order, which can take at least 18 months to complete and deliver.

The train station is supposed to be built with $213 million in state grant money. It would accommodate two other transportation systems in addition to All Aboard Florida, Brown said.

Overall, the airport could spend nearly $450 million on the people mover, a parking garage and related highway and utility improvements. Once complete, the project also would serve a planned second terminal costing more than $1 billion that could be built nearby if airport traffic grows.

Reininger said work on Phase 1 should begin within weeks in Miami, where All Aboard Florida already owns property. On Tuesday, he unveiled plans for a $30 million station on 4.8 acres in downtown Fort Lauderdale. Another station is slated for West Palm Beach.

There would no stops between West Palm and Orlando International. Some people living in counties and communities along the Treasure Coast, including Brevard, Martin and Indian River, oppose the train. They say it could harm the quality of life in towns along its path, encourage more gambling halls in South Florida and suck up tax dollars for private gain.

“It is all about the longterm effects, communities build closely around the tracks and never intended for this,” Douglas Ashley, who lives in Indian River County, wrote in an email to the Orlando Sentinel.

Reininger said it is difficult to satisfy critics of the project because they have voiced conflicting concerns: Some want it moved to a different set of tracks, others want it stopped, while still others are seeking a station.

“The inconsistency in those voices is confusing to us,” he said.

An All Aboard Florida sister company, Florida East Coast Railway, owns tracks it uses for freight trains that run the length of the East Coast, largely from Miami to Jacksonville. Those tracks will be upgraded and available for All Aboard Florida.

Gov. Rick Scott, vocal earlier in his support for the passenger train, recently asked the federal government to delay issuing an environmentalimpact statement for two weeks on the possible effects of the system to allow more public input.

Reininger said that document could be completed by the end of the year, even with the postponement. When that happens, he said, work would begin on the West Palm to Orlando link.

New tracks would have to be laid from near Cocoa, along the Beach Line, to the airport. All Aboard Florida also is expected to finish the interior of the depot the airport intends to build.

In return for the station, All Aboard Florida would pay the airport$2.8 million annually for rent, plus up to $1.50 per train passenger leaving from Orlando. The train company also would spend $50 million to build a maintenance facility at the airport and more than $580,000 a year to lease the land for it.

Its customers are expected to be business travelers and tourists, and a one-way ticket could cost about $100 for the expected three-hour trip.