Could Treasure Coast get commuter rail, more inter-city service? Not with our attitude.

A few days ago, my colleague Larry Reisman wrote a column about how nice it would be to have a commuter train service connecting Vero Beach, Fort Pierce and Stuart. I don't disagree.

It would be even more helpful to have trains connecting people living on the Treasure Coast with jobs and recreational opportunities in West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Ideas like that have been, and, to some degree, probably still are, under consideration by various planning agencies.

As Larry's column noted, Amtrak had a plan more than a decade ago to return passenger service to Florida East Coast Railway tracks.

The passenger train company planned to use state-owned tracks from Miami to West Palm Beach, then switch to Florida East Coast Railway tracks, with stops at new stations in Stuart, Fort Pierce, Vero Beach, Melbourne, Cocoa, Titusville, Daytona Beach and St. Augustine before linking to Amtrak's existing service in Jacksonville, TCPalm reported.

Sounds pretty cool, right?

Why commuter rail may remain a pipe dream

The Florida Department of Transportation has been studying the feasibility of providing commuter rail service from Miami to Jupiter. It doesn't take much imagination to see how that concept could be extended to include a line stopping in Indiantown or Port St. Lucie, potentially taking thousands of cars off local roads each day.

At the rate we're going, though, I don't see any of that happening. Why? Because people on the Treasure Coast are having too hard a time adjusting to sharing the roads (well, really just the road crossings) with Brightline trains.

I understand Brightline remains very unpopular within some parts of our community. Since the company launched its service between West Palm Beach and Orlando, dozens of trains have been traveling through our region each day.

Since there's no stop on the Treasure Coast yet, there's no practical benefit to local residents for having the service.

That will change when Brightline selects a location for a Treasure Coast station, most likely in either Fort Pierce or Stuart, but the station isn't expected to be operational until early 2028.

Complaining about Brightline a popular diversion

Even after the Treasure Coast station is built, though, it still won't provide commuter service with frequent stops. As Brightline chief executive officer Michael Reininger told me in an October interview, the West Palm Beach-to-Orlando route is intended to be an express service, with as few stops as possible along the way.

We're getting a stop because it's part of a legal settlement Brightline reached with Martin County and another group, but it's not the company's plan to blanket the coastline with new stations.

Brightline's business model focuses on moving people between major cities that are too close to be practical for airline travel. That will become more evident if Brightline's plans to expand service to Tampa and Jacksonville are successful.

In addition to laments about the lack of commuter service, I've also heard numerous people suggest Brightline would work better on elevated tracks outside of major population centers.

So maybe Brightline isn't exactly the type of train service Treasure Coast residents would have requested, if we had been given a choice.

Unfortunately, life often gives us things we don't necessarily want or think we need. We can either adapt to new realities or else wallow in misery.

How minor accidents get blown out of proportion

Some people here ― and I'm hoping it's a small number at this point ― seem to prefer to wallow. They never wanted Brightline in the first place, so they're going to complain about the service every chance they get.

They complain about waiting an extra minute or two at railroad crossings for Brightline trains to pass. They complain the train horns are too loud. (More on that in a minute.) And they complain the presence of Brightline trains has made our community a much more unsafe place.

I don't recall ever hearing anyone complain about malfunctioning crossing gates when only freight trains were using the local railroad tracks. Now that we've got Brightline, people are sounding the alarm on social media if a crossing arm that's supposed to be in the down position gets held up by a stiff wind for a few seconds.

And any accident involving Brightline gets blown way out of proportion.

Take an example from a few days ago, when a car was struck by a Brightline train at Confusion Corner in Stuart. The car may have gotten stuck on the tracks because a car in front of it had to stop for pedestrians in the East Ocean Boulevard crosswalk, which is one of Confusion Corner's quirks.

No one was injured, which makes the accident no different from dozens that happen along our roadways every day. Except for the fact that a Brightline train was involved.

Within a couple of hours after the crash, I saw more than 150 comments on one Facebook post about the accident. Would a car-on-car accident have attracted anywhere near that amount of attention? Or any attention at all?

We could try complaining less and driving more safely

I believe there are people in the community who think if they complain about Brightline long and loudly enough, eventually the trains will just go away. That's not realistic.

But if it were, it would certainly weaken the case for establishing any other type of passenger train service running through here. If people can't manage to stay out of the way of Brightline trains, why would some other railroad company want to expose itself to potential lawsuits, operational delays and other headaches associated with operating on the Treasure Coast?

Also, for those complaining about the train horns, bear in mind Brightline isn't going to be able to establish "quiet zones" where horns wouldn't be used as long as there's an unacceptably high risk of collisions with cars or pedestrians.

So the loud-train complainers are actually at cross purposes with the dangerous-train complainers.

People can coexist with Brightline trains. I've seen train systems built at grade level work in other communities in the United States and overseas. People can coexist with other types of passenger trains that might better suit their individual needs, too.

The real question is, are they willing to change their behavior a little to make room for another form of transportation? The early answers aren't too promising.

This column reflects the opinion of Blake Fontenay. Contact him via email at blake.fontenay@tcpalm.com or at 772-232-5424.

This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: Treasure Coast commuter rail? Not if we can't handle Brightline trains