Miami Trip

Took a ride down to Miami from Lake Worth Station on 1/8. Seems like double tracking is progressing quite nicely with only a few sections and the South Fork of the New River bridge requiring completion. We were bussed between Sheridan Street station and Golden Glades, which they said was due to track work in the area. Apparently this work was completed by the end of the night, as on my return trip there was no bussing. Hopefully the new schedules will come into effect soon as more service is desperately needed, especially on weekends. A 7:31pm departure from Miami Metrorail station on Sundays is much too early to be the final trip.

I totally agree that Tri-Rail needs more service to be really effective.
Most needed is late evening service especially northbound out of Miami.
There should be a north bound train around 11:00 PM or maybe just a
little bit later than that to accomodate people who work 3-11 shifts at the
airport or whereever else people work and also for people attending
concerts, theater or sporting events. Addition of late night service would
also result in increased use of afternoon southbound trains as well.
I have been going to ride both directions out of Fort Lauderdale as well but
every time I think about doing it, something else seems to come up first.
Noel Weaver

I don't think that weekdays are so bad, as I'm pretty sure there is a northbound departure from Miami around 11pm...but the weekends especially on sundays are where the worst service is. I'm also amazed at the extremely low fare they charge. As a student, I took a round trip Tri-Rail trip and a roundtrip on the Metrorail for an amazing two dollars. I don't think there is any other rail system in the world where you can go 144 miles (the roundtrip: 72 times 2) on a train and then have free access to the subway system.

The last northbound train out of MIA Monday through Friday is at 8:19 PM,
Saturday at 9:19 PM and Sunday at 7:19 PM. Someday, we may have
later trains but as of right now, this is it.
I took a ride from Fort Lauderdale to MIA on Thursday the 12th of January
and it was interesting. There was not as much double track as I had
expected. Of course the New River Bridge has a long way to go and they
do not seem to be moving as fast on this as I thought they would. In
addition there is still single track through Hollywood as the southbound
(west track) in Hollywood passenger station is removed for construction.
There is also only one track still in the 79th Street Station which is
Metrorail Transfer in the timetable.
It appears to me that it will be a while before the work south of Fort
Lauderdale Station has come to a finish. They are working but it all takes
time, my guess, at least another year.
Incidentally, I do not advise riding Tri-Rail this weekend (Jan. 14 & 15) as
they will be using a bus bridge between Golden Glades or Opa-Locka and Miami Airport station, I don't remember which north station was mentioned
in the notice.
They seem to have padded the schedules as we got stopped both ways
and yet we were on time at MIA southbound and at FTL northbound.
They finally got around to putting out a timetable booklet like they used to
dated June, 2005 but they also put out a new pocket timetable which is
dated January, 2006. There did not appear to be any changes in the train
service nor in the times at stations from June to January.
Will try to up-date north of Fort Lauderdale within a week or two, it has
been a while since I have gone up to West Palm.
Noel Weaver

Tuesday (Jan. 24th) I finally got a chance to ride up to West Palm and
back, actually I went all the way to Mangonia Park for a change.
The trains in both directions were basically on time.
There is still some work going on north of Fort Lauderdale but for the
most part, the double track is now fully in place if not in use. The only
station that I am sure that there is only one track presently being used
was Delray Beach where we used the "EAST TRACK" in both directions
and a good look on the southbound trip disclosed that there were some
ballast cars on the west track at a point near Delray Beach and there were
some places where the track although fully in place might need a little
more ballast before officially being put into passenger service. I am not
positive if both tracks were in service at Lake Worth Station either but I
seem to think that they were. Going north we had to wait a minute or so
somewhere up in there for a southbound train but it was a short wait and
no real loss of time.
If you are thinking of taking a "joy ride" on Tri-Rail anytime soon, I
suggest you check their web site and also the notices around the station
before you buy tickets and get on the train as there is a possibility of
delays from time to time and also sometimes there are "bus bridges" in
various areas sometimes on weekends.
There is still some work to be done south of Fort Lauderdale Station and
I don't think they were be finished with this project for a while yet.
Will try to keep watch on the situation.
Noel Weaver