But the biggest new hurdle to me is the sale of Industries/AAF to Japanese and Railway to Mexican. Industries has other things "on the plate" namely how to invest the proceeds from the sale of the railroad. The railroad is in one set of hands and AAF is in another. This becomes analogous to the Amtrak/Class I clash of interests - and AAF has no Federal mandate in a lawful requirement to provide access on which to hang its hat.
For what it is worth, I had a chat with the CEO of AAF about this matter. According to what he explained, AAF's rights are substantially protected in the contract that exists between FECR and AAF.
Unlike the situation between Amtrak and the Class Is, FECR does not dispatch the railroad in question any more. There is an AAF/FECR 50/50 jointly owned subsidiary - Florida Dispatching Company, which is in charge of all dispatching on both FECR property and on the new AAF property under construction in Phase II. I was shown extensive plans with full simulation of path diagrams for mixed freight and passenger operation and contingency plans for those times when things break down. I have never seen anything like that even from Amtrak for their owned properties on the NEC.
However, the proof of the pudding as always in eating it, so we will see. But I just wanted to point out that certain assumptions being made here are at variance with reality.
Also the only County that constitutes the "Space Coast" - Brevard County, is in active negotiation with AAF for construction of a station at a site that has been selected in Cocoa/Rockledge, with construction to begin soon after introduction of service to Orlando. So to claim that the County is opposed to AAF is at variance with known facts. Are there a few NIMBYs? Of course there are, specially in the sticks in the deep south part of the county adjacent to Indian River County, where there is significant opposition from even some county officials. The main State level opposer is in the State Senate in the form of Debbie Maynard of Vero Beach, part of whose district includes southern Brevard County too.
Those who are really interested in learning more should join the FECR Society. Their meetings and newsletters provide a treasure trove of quite reliable information both on FECR and AAF. All that one sees in the press is marketing fluff and NIMBY posturing mostly with next to zero technical content by which to judge the viability or lack thereof.
I don't know why, but maybe part of the problem was that FEC owned the ROW and wouldn't let Tri Rail run into downtown.
On the other hand, seeing the site of the downtown station was retained intact over all these years and never parcelled out or built on, does suggest that there was some plan in the background that allowed for at least the possibility of passenger trains of some description returning to the site.
Does anybody know?
There was no station and no one willing to fund construction of it at that site until the Fortress Group decided that they needed to boost returns from all the downtown property that they own.
Running a service from the FECR to anywhere in Miami would have required much greater amount of public funding and access to a lot of property owned by the FEC even to construct other stations on the route. FECR or its then owners were unwilling to make such available at any reasonable rate. Hence what was built was long the CSX route which eventually CSX was willing to sell off.
It should be noted that AAF and FECR have stated to the County Transportation Planners in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties that if a local service is developed on the FECR property in those two counties, AAF intends to do so before they will let anyone else in. So I doubt that any TriRail will run south of West Palm Beach and north of Miami Central, on FECR property for quite a while yet. Apparently the contract between FECR and AAF gives AAF the first right of refusal for running passenger service on FECR.
The various FEC related outfits, Fortress Group as its latest umbrella incarnation, is about real estate and transportation following the Flagler tradition. I don't think they necessarily knew what they were going to do with the downtown site until they decided to use it for a joint real estate/transportation development. Part of it would have continued to host the link to the Harbor, irrespective of what real estate development they chose for it. I am not sure anyone has systematically recorded what their internal decision making process was. But when they hired Gene Skorpowski it became obvious they were quite serious about rail passenger service.
Incidentally, I had a long chat will Gene at the RPA meeting in Chicago. He had several interesting insights to share, which would probably not be appropriate to discuss in a public forum.
