Rep Patrick Murphy on All Aboard Florida

Dear Concerned Citizen,

 Thank you for all you have done to raise awareness and voice your concerns regarding the proposed All Aboard Florida (AAF) rail project. Yours has been a true grassroots initiative to advocate for an important community concern, and for that I applaud your efforts. AAF stands to have a significant detrimental effect on the quality of life in communities from the Palm Beaches through the Treasure Coast, which I am honored to represent in Congress. The likelihood that AAF will delay emergency vehicles, create traffic jams, increase noise pollution, and block our waterways is simply too great to ignore. Combined with the possibility that AAF could force Florida towns and cities on already-tight budgets to foot the bill for quiet crossings and future maintenance, these problems must be addressed before the project may proceed.

As you are well-aware, despite being a private initiative, AAF has applied for a significant sum of federal loans from the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program. For that reason, I met with U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx to urge that before any such loan is granted, AAF must:

1. Install safety equipment necessary to meet maximum FRA safety guidelines along the Florida East Coast Industries (FECI) line and at grade crossings;
2. Share financial responsibility for quiet zones and ongoing maintenance at grade crossings
3. Share financial responsibility for bridge upgrades to speed the raising and lowering of drawbridges, and widen bridge pilings to allow two-way boat traffic to pass;
4. Structure the new AAF train schedule to avoid significantly delaying emergency vehicles at grade crossings, worsening surrounding road traffic, and unduly congesting our waterways by blocking maritime traffic at drawbridges;
5. Move freight traffic from the FECI railroad to the adjacent CSX line before AAF passenger service begins to balance the number of trains on the FECI line and to prevent the time that waterways and roads are blocked
6. Demonstrate that AAF’s passenger service is a financially sound investment in and of itself, and that AAF will be able to make timely debt payments on the potential federal loan after operating and maintenance expenses;
7. Publish publicly an economic impact study describing the positive and negative effects to commerce, property values, tax revenues, real estate sales, and tourism; and
8. Provide the expected ridership levels from foreign travelers, interstate travelers coming from outside the Miami-Dade/Broward/Palm Beach tri-county area, and travelers within the tri-county area.

Thank you again for raising your collective voices to express your concerns about All Aboard Florida. On Sunday, May 4, I will attend the rally hosted by Florida Not All Aboard in Stuart, where I look forward to hearing from many of you in person. I will continue to press AAF and the U.S. Department of Transportation for responses to the concerns our communities’ have raised, and I hope you will not hesitate to reach out to me with any additional questions or comments.

 Sincerely, Patrick E. Murphy Member of Congress