WHAT TO KNOW:
- Under new plan, round-trip tickets between West Palm Beach and Miami on this route are $17.50.
- It will only stop at Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, and the transfer station before reaching MiamiCentral.
- The express train will leave the West Palm Beach station at 6:30 a.m. and get to MiamiCentral at 8:05 a.m.
- In the afternoon, the express train will leave Miami at 5:35 p.m.
A new way to get from West Palm Beach to the Magic City kicked off Monday morning.
Tri-Rail is launching a pilot program for an express route to Miami, eliminating more than 10 stops along the way.
I asked Tri-Rail leaders why they’re deciding to launch this now, and if this has anything to do with Brightline raising ticket prices. Their answer was yes.
Brightline made the decision to get rid of their train passes, effective June 1.
Travel
Tri-Rail launching express train to downtown Miami
The company said "it has become increasingly difficult to accommodate all guests as peak trains are reaching capacity," according to its website.
Before, you could buy 40 one-way tickets for $400. Now, after their price increase and changes that started this month, those same 40 tickets would cost you $1,400.
Brightline said they worked with Tri-Rail to alleviate this.
Under this new plan, Tri Rail tickets are $17.50 round-trip.
I asked the executive director of South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which runs Tri-Rail, how that relationship worked.
“We went through our schedule to see if we could actually squeeze it in. We saw that we could, and then we went to the board for the budget for it,” said David Dech, SFRTA’s executive director. “Brightline recognized that there were going to be some people that were upset with the pricing, and reached out to see if there was something we could do to help everybody.”
It’s a one-seat ride, meaning passengers won’t have to transfer.
The express train will leave the West Palm Beach station on Tamarind Avenue and Clematis Street at 6:30 a.m. each weekday and get to MiamiCentral at 8:05 a.m.
In the afternoon, the express train will leave Miami at 5:35 p.m.
Tri-Rail said this will cut the drive time between West Palm Beach and Miami by more than 30 minutes.
The new express route also eliminates a bunch of stops. It will only stop at Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood Airport, and the transfer station before reaching MiamiCentral. The stops that were kept were chosen strategically, according to Tri-Rail.
WPTV asked about more trains becoming available for this route. Dech said they’ll use all the information they get from the pilot to decide if they can add more trains to this route.
“Later on in the year, we'll be able to evaluate our business model, in general," Dech said. "I don't have the funding or the equipment to just put on a whole bunch of additional express trains. We do share this line with Amtrak. We share this line with CSX. We don't have a blank check to go out and kind of do whatever we want. But this is a good opportunity to see if there really is a demand.”
