GUEST COMMENTARY
KEN DAIGE
More than two years ago Federal, State and local leaders knew of the possibility of a private high speed rail rolling down the eastern FEC corridor in Florida. We are told these discussions took place at the same time Tri-Rail and Sun-Rail upgrades and expansions were discussed.
These discussions were held the in major cities to the south and northeast of us. Our local elected officials heard these discussions at various regional meetings and no local action was taken.
There are concerns from Treasure Coast citizens who say they are just now hearing about the All Aboard Florida (AAF) project.
Mid 2013 the Vero Beach City Council heard a presentation from a representative of All Aboard Florida. After discussion city council voted to form the Vero Beach High Speed Rail Commission, an advisory board to the city council, whose mission is to gather information and make recommendations to city council.
In the meantime the Panama Canal has expanded, the Port of Miami, Port Everglades, Port Canaveral and rail freight hubs are expanding. Major airports in South and Central Florida are expanding. Cruise Liners are upgrading and housing their finest at the expanded ports. And State Legislators have been meeting with various lobbyists and politicians who want funding for stadiums, transportation hubs, road ways and various types of tourism and economic incentives. The State budget is presently being debated.
The Vero Beach High Speed Rail Commission has had numerous meetings including input from Mr. Roberts, an AAF representative; Ms. Delaney, a Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council Representative; Mr. Matson, the Indian River County Metropolitan Planning Organization Director; Mr. O’Connor, Vero Beach City Manager; Mr. Falls, Vero Beach Public Works Director; Mr. Coment, Vero Beach City Attorney; Vero Beach Police Chief Curry; as well as input from citizens speaking at the public podium. The HSR Commission also encourages the public to attend our meetings and share their concerns. This is in keeping with city council directive that the HSR Commission reach out to the community to collect information.
Topics have ranged from costs, feasibility, time frames, public input, safety, probability and the Draft Environmental Impact Study; required only when AAF requested a federal loan. Knowing our legal rights as a community began to draw much conversation.
The consensus of the High Speed Rail Commission was to request city council hire legal council acquainted with federal rail law to determine the next step in the complicated process. Mr. Coment has explained this is not his area of expertise. City Council took no action on the High Speed Rail Commission request.
As Chairman of the High Speed Rail Commission, I requested a letter from city council be sent to State Sen. Joe Negron who had already shown support for the AAF project as well as requesting AAF pay for the quiet-safety zones. The letter to Senator Negon was drawn from the previous resolution the city council had adopted asking for financial help from the State for Quiet-Safety Zones. Local government agencies are preparing to band together to request funding and/or to share costs as well as list concerns related to the proposed project.
A recent official consensus is to require AAF to pay for Quiet-Safety Zones and related costs. Local governments are preparing draft resolutions and/or statements declaring that AAF receive no federal or state funding without submitTing a business plan as well as other considerations. An oft-repeated concern is negative affects without benefits.
The High Speed Rail Commission is also preparing information to be included in the Final Environmental Impact Study. The draft environmental impact study is due out sometime in the spring and the public is encouraged to participate; dates, locations and times to be announced. At a Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council meeting I requested adding 45 days for a total of 90 days for the public comment period to review the draft study. That request was added to the list of recommendations sent by the Treasure Coast Regional Council to the Federal Rail Administration; we await confirmation of the requests.
It has been suggested that concerns and comments should be backed up with documentation that follows the Federal Rail Commission guidelines and laws.
As a word of caution, prudence would dictate city council retain legal council familiar with Federal Rail Law – we will need to know our rights when we make our requests; and the possibility of necessary mitigation-mediation. AAF already knows their rights and privileges, we don’t.
Indian River Guardian 
It appears that the position of the VB HIgh Speed Rail Commission is that the concept is just peachy keen but we would like some bucks for the crossing gates. In my discussions with concerned citizens, nothing could be farther from real life.
The rest of us are greatly concerned about the disruption of our right to peaceful enjoyment of our lives. The projected 700 ton hot rods will be blasting through every town and village on the treasure at Mach 0.2 thirty two times per day. The local noise will be deafening …the vibration upsetting to your body and psyche. All this will be right down the middle of the downtown areas of virtually every significant town and village on the Treasure Coast.
How can commerce proceed when they are interrupted by a mild earthquake every 30 minutes or less? How can traffic proceed? What happens at the “informal” pedestrian crossings everywhere? I can picture Vero Beach’s historic downtown being evacuated in a couple of years. May God save the folks at the Chamber of Commerce, it will become the Chamber of Horrors! Poor Stuart! Their entire commercial sector will be thrown into chaos. The AAF trains.will be heard miles from the tracks, further irritating the rest of 90% of the entire area’s population.
Perhaps it is time to dig a bit deeper into this coming calamity. Do it now while we have some semblance of a chance to accomplish something.
Nowhere in the column does it state the High Speed Rail Commission is for the high speed rail.
Your elected officials knew about this project over two years ago.
When the HSR commission was formed the only option available to us at the time was for Quiet-Safety Zones. The city council approved a resolution joining with other cities and counties asking for help with funding.
Federal and State officials have already put their stamp of approval on this project.
If we don’t discover our rights we may be left in the dust of the high speed rail.
To add to this comment –
The Draft EIS public comment period for southern Florida has already taken place – less than 90 citizens spoke and very few spoke against.
We are told Florida State FDOT guidelines are less restrictive than Federal guidelines. Which will be followed?
We have no starting point if we do not know our rights.
The coming high speed train would be an ideal topic to be addressed by the Seven50 coalition of other counties facing the same situation. Since Indian River County is a small entity with limited resources, we would greatly benefit in being able to present a united front. Also, the costs to the taxpayers would be lessen because the costs would be shared with others.
The issue that should be of most concern is the access that the local community would have to get medical care in the case of emergency. The potential for someone to lose a loved one because they were delayed by a long train passing through our community is NOT a risk that we should be willing to take. This is precisely why it was foolish for our local “leaders” to be intimidated by a small minority and not allow the concept of partnership to even be discussed.
The issues that should be of most concern would not be settled by retaining the services of a rail attorney. What we need is an expert on safety and liability — one fatality is one too many.
Some of the first concerns I brought up at a HSR commission meeting were accessibility to the Hospital, Fire-Rescue and Police.
We need to know our legal rights including federal rail law, state road and rail law as well as safety and liability issues. Federal, State and local are not always on the same page.
Currently as pertains to the Draft EIS, Indian River County through Brevard is considered rural. Is that due to population numbers, layout of the region or what? This is something else we need to know because rural means 110 miles an hour passing through.
We do need to join with other communities in a rational process to present our concerns.
Knowing federal and state elected officials already approve this project as best for Florida’s economy we will not be heard if we do not present a unified front with reasonable concerns backed up with the law on our side.
The proposed rail service would run high speed passenger trains over 100-year old freight rails, with dozens of at-grade crossings. This is not a good transportation engineering solution, even ignoring the human costs to the impacted communities.
These trains will run nonstop to Orlando after their last stop in West Palm Beach (WPB), providing only negative impacts to communities in the north Palm Beach County and Treasure Coast areas. Given this, it would make far more sense from a transportation planning perspective to utilize the I-95 and Florida Turnpike corridors.
These existing limited access corridors would accommodate modern high-speed rail tracks without dangerous and disruptive at-grade crossings. This would make far more sense than attempting to route modern high speed rail on 100-year old rights-of-way through residential areas.
On a limited access corridor, trains would run at true high speed (100+ mph) without the speed restrictions (approximately 60 mph according to Federal Railroad Administration documents) of at-grade crossings in populated areas. This would seem to increase the attractiveness of the trains to the traveling public, and therefore commercial success.
Under the AAF plan, a person would travel faster and more directly from Miami to Orlando by highway bus at 70+ mph rather than the proposed train. In fact, the lowest environmental impact and lowest dollar cost means of providing mass transportation from Miami-Dade-WPB to Orlando and Jacksonville would be to simply buy modern cross-country highway busses.
If the goal is truly to provide efficient fast transportation between Florida’s major population centers — rather than create a new ‘shovel ready project’ for political purposes, plus a profit center for an aging freight rail company — then we should be considering busses.