Brightline here: Wouldn't it be nice to ride between Fort Pierce, Stuart and Vero Beach?

Laurence Reisman, Treasure Coast Newspapers
Updated ·2 min read
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All the talk about whether Brightline should put a station in Stuart or Fort Pierce got me thinking …

Last month I was chatting with parents whose oldest child, a teenage daughter, asked about driving and “going out” with friends. The apprehensive mother had what I thought was a great idea.

Because they live within a 15-minute walk of Metro-North Railroad’s Irvington, New York, station, mom suggested her daughter and friends take the train a few miles, two stops, south to the station in Dobbs Ferry. There are good, relatively inexpensive restaurants nearby, she said.

As a teen in Irvington, we occasionally took the train to New York City, awfully convenient, but mostly we drove where we wanted to go. It would have been nice to take the train to nearby villages; we just never thought about it.

It got me thinking of Amtrak's plan in 2012, 13 years in the making, to return passenger service to Florida East Coast Railway tracks.

Amtrak planned to use state-owned track from Miami to West Palm Beach, switch to FEC track, then stop at new stations in Stuart, Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, Melbourne, Cocoa, Titusville, Daytona Beach and St. Augustine before linking to Amtrak service in Jacksonville, TCPalm reported.

Early 2024 deadline: Where will Brightline's local station be? That really comes down to one key consideration.

History lesson: Excited by Brightline start, shiny trains, quad gates? After 11 years, here's the letdown.

Then Brightline came along. Its mission was high-speed, express service from Miami to Orlando. It took a settled lawsuit to get Brightline to commit to a station on the Treasure Coast, either Fort Pierce of Stuart, as Indian River County was not promised a station in a subsequent court settlement.

Now, entities in Stuart and Fort Pierce have asked for a station Brightline has said it would award in early 2024.

I think back to that mom in Irvington.

Or that commuter in Vero Beach who drives to Stuart, or West Palm Beach.

Or that Vero Beach service worker who lives in Fort Pierce and doesn’t have her own car.

Will there ever be commuter service on the Treasure Coast?

I like Fort Pierce as a central location in case I ― not a family of four, because it would be too expensive ― go to the Orlando airport or Miami. Fort Pierce is convenient for the entire Treasure Coast.

But what if Stuart and Vero Beach ― or Sebastian ― could bookend the Treasure Coast, with Fort Pierce getting a stop, too?

LAURENCE REISMAN
LAURENCE REISMAN

Part of me is excited about autonomous vehicles, but ... In the meantime, will there come a time when we can walk or park at the station, hop on the train and get some work done while we’re traveling?

It sure sounds nice, especially in a place like Vero Beach that in 2024 will spend more money trying to come up with long-term solutions for its downtown.

This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.

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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Pipe dream perhaps, but what if Treasure Coast had local rail service?