Tri-Rail arrives in Miami, but not the promised one-seat ride downtown. What’s next?

For years, Tri-Rail promoted a “one-seat” train ride into Miami from West Palm Beach once it could open a platform in Brightline’s rail complex in the heart of downtown.

That new Tri-Rail station opened on Friday with a steel drum band and confetti, but without the seamless train ride that was the centerpiece of the agency’s original plans.

Instead, elected officials, Tri-Rail leaders and other VIPs had to transfer from the main Tri-Rail rail line at a Hialeah station to a different train now assigned only to run back and forth to Miami.

READ MORE: Tri-Rail trains finally ready to roll into Miami, seven years later than planned

“It’s not ideal... It’s the hand we were dealt,” said David Dech, executive director of Tri-Rail’s parent agency, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which is funded with a mix of county, state and federal dollars.

He took the job in 2022, at a time when the Miami station’s opening was already five years behind schedule.

“In order to get Miami open as quickly as we could,” he said during the roughly 20-minute train ride from Hialeah to Miami for the ceremonial station launch, “these are the steps we took. It’s going to be an interim step, going up to getting the one-seat rides.”

Miami’s newest rapid-transit route essentially duplicates an existing option for commuters.

Tri-Rail passengers heading downtown currently transfer to Metrorail from the same Hialeah station for a trip to Miami-Dade County’s Government Center. The Metrorail station there is close enough that a pedestrian bridge connects it with the new Tri-Rail platform in the Brightline complex.

Schedules for both train systems show both Tri-Rail and Metrorail taking about 20 minutes to get from the Hialeah transfer station to Miami.

Dech said Tri-Rail needs more time to purchase new trains that will meet the stricter exhaust standards required to use a Brightine station that’s attached to a luxury apartment tower. He said Tri-Rail also needs time to iron out the logistics to prevent disrupting existing Tri-Rail schedules down to the popular end point of the line at Miami International Airport.

He declined to give a target for when the one-seat rides would begin to Miami, but said it would be “longer than months.”

Even so, the launch of Tri-Rail’s service into Miami brought multiple positive developments for commuters who already use the system or are hoping for better transit in the future.

More trains to Miami, and probably a quicker transfer

While the Tri-Rail and Metrorail schedules show both lines taking about 20 minutes for the run into Miami, adding Tri-Rail service to the mix does give commuters another option.

Tri-Rail plans 13 weekday departures roughly every hour on weekdays from the platform at 2601 E 11th Ave. in Hialeah, which shares space with a Metrorail station. On the Metrorail map, it’s the Tri-Rail Transfer Station and the reverse on the Tri-Rail map.

Switching from Tri-Rail to Metrorail at that station does require some steps: Passengers need to take the elevator or stairs up to the third-floor platform to catch the Metrorail trains heading south into downtown.

Hopping on a Miami-bound Tri-Rail train should be much simpler, with passengers either waiting for the next locomotive on the same tracks or crossing over to the other street-level platform.

For regular Tri-Rail commuter Nikisha Williams, the transfer requirement was a surprise when the agency revealed that part of the plan for opening the Miami station.

The non-profit executive said she’s still excited to ride the new route once regular service opens to the public on Saturday, Jan. 13, and said she’s hopeful it will improve her regular train trips into downtown from her home in Opa-locka.

“I’m going to do the transfer and see if that impacts my commute,” Williams, managing director of collective impact at the Miami Foundation, said after hopping on a Miami-bound Metrorail train from the Tri-Rail transfer station. “I’m hopeful. The transfer doesn’t matter. What matters is the impact on the commute.”

Tri-Rail to Miami requires a transfer, but now it’s free

Regular commuters with a $155 monthly regional transit pass already enjoy free transfers from Tri-Rail to Metrorail for the train switch into downtown Miami.

With Tri-Rail running its own trains into Miami, it can offer a transfer that’s free for all passengers. Metrorail rides cost $2.25 each way. Tri-Rail tickets from West Palm Beach to Miami cost $8.75, but rides within Miami-Dade cost $2.50.

The fees show why Tri-Rail operates as the cheaper, public alternative to Brightline, which charges about $25 for a train ride from Miami to West Palm Beach.

Tri-Rail’s Miami saga finally ends, with work to do

When a double-decker train pushed through the ceremonial Tri-Rail banner at the Brightline station on Friday morning, it opened a platform that once was slated for a 2017 debut. That was in 2015, when Tri-Rail administrators were lobbying for what turned out to be a $43 million funding package from Miami and Miami-Dade to make the project happen.

That was also when the plan was for Tri-Rail to shift half of its airport-bound trains to Miami every day, allowing for what was described in a 2021 report to state regulators as “a one-stop ride from Tri-Rail’s northernmost station in Palm Beach County to the Miami Central Station in downtown Miami.”

A 2015 presentation to the county’s Citizens Independent Transportation Trust oversight board described “26 direct trains per weekday between downtown Miami and all points north.”

A string of delays and turmoil hit Tri-Rail in the years that followed, including the 2021 revelation that the agency’s trains initially didn’t fit the new platform Brightline built with public dollars.

Raquel Regalado is the Miami-Dade commissioner who served as Tri-Rail’s chair during a management shake-up that brought Dech in as director in 2022.

She said the agency had been slow to make the upgrades needed to launch one-seat rides into Miami. But under new management, she said, the timetable is accelerating.

“We’re trying our best to course correct,” she said.

READ MORE: Tri-Rail director resigning after fallout from Brightline train station defects

Mark Brown, a city planner who often takes Metrorail and Tri-Rail for commutes to the Fort Lauderdale area, said he’s eager to see if the new Miami option will save him time. “Ideally, it would be a one-seat ride,” he said.

But even so, Brown predicted bringing Tri-Rail into downtown — with a newly accessible covered walkway linking the Government Center Metrorail station to the Brightline complex — should boost interest in using rail as a commuting option. “I think it’s going to be very popular,” he said.

Tri-Rail now ready for a commuter rail launch with Brightline

A big selling point for the Miami station nearly a decade ago was the prospect of positioning Tri-Rail to launch a new commuter rail line on the tracks Brightline uses along U.S. 1.

Known as the “Coastal Link,” the street-level rail service would connect stations in Wynwood, Little Haiti and other neighborhoods between the express stops of Miami, Aventura and Fort Lauderdale that Brightline offers.

Brightline is negotiating a track-rental agreement with the administration of Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava while the project awaits news on a $239 million federal grant application. No decision has been made on an operator, but Tri-Rail is interested and considered well positioned to win a county contract to run the system.

“I see this as a thrilling day because of the Coastal Link,” said Eileen Higgins, the Miami-Dade commissioner who chairs the board’s Transportation committee. “Without that platform, none of it is possible.”