Biden budget funds Northeast Miami-Dade rail startup

President Joseph Biden has recommended in his 2025 budget $263.7 million to help fund the Northeast Corridor Rapid Transit Project, one of six legs in Miami-Dade County’s vaunted Smart Program to develop new rapid mass transit to relieve traffic congestion.

The Northeast Corridor rail line is to provide commuter rail 19 hours a day and seven days a week starting in December 2027 over 13.5 miles of the Florida East Coast Railway corridor from MiamiCentral Station in downtown Miami to Aventura. It’s among 14 large transit projects nationally that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recommended this week for a total of almost $4 billion.

Federal documents say that the Miami-Dade Department of Transportation and Public Works plans to begin engineering the project in the middle of this year and get a full funding grant agreement for the $538 million project by May 2025. The federal grant, if it survives budget approval in Congress, is almost half of that total funding.

An operator for the service has not been formally selected, but private rail service Brightline is likely to undertake it. Brightline has a new station in Aventura built with county funds, and it operates regionally across the county line linking to Palm Beach County and beyond. Brightline has just announced it will build another station in Stuart.

The Northeast project includes rail stations, park-and-ride facilities with a total of 521 parking spaces, “the purchase of vehicles and improvements to a rail yard and rail vehicle maintenance storage facility” owned by the Florida Department of Transportation in Hialeah, the federal notice of the budgeting states.

The train service is to run every 30 minutes during weekday peak hours and every 60 minutes at other times.

The budget is likely to travel its own difficult route as it goes through a Congress over which the president’s party has no control.

The Miami-Dade County Commission was asked last year to adopt in the county budget 30% of the federal government’s Capital Investment Grant for the rail program because the Federal Transit Administration required that budgeting before the administration would enter into an agreement for engineering of the project.

In an emergency vote in January, the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust voted to add up to $125.4 million to nearly double totals on 10 existing outside service contracts. Members were told at the time that they could not delay the vote on two contracts for the Northeast Corridor of the Smart Program transit without endangering federal funds for the project.

Commissioner Eileen Higgins, the county commission’s transportation committee chair, explained then that the trust vote would be crucial in winning the federal funds. In a memo the day before, County Chief Operations Officer Jimmy Morales wrote that federal funding “would be jeopardized if this item is not approved … at this meeting.”

The formal description of the Northeast Corridor project shows seven rail stations planned, including the two Brightline now operates in downtown Miami and West Aventura. Stations are proposed at Northeast 27th Street in Wynwood, Northeast 39th Street in the Design District, Northeast 61st Street in Little Haiti, Northeast 123rd Street in North Miami and Northeast 151st Street for the Florida International University campus there and Biscayne Boulevard.

The project is based on an annual operating cost of $23.79 million when it opens in 2027.

Capital costs include the purchase of 20 commuter rail vehicles and modifications to the MiamiCentral and Aventura stations to accommodate the new commuter rail line.

Sources of funding beyond the federal funds are to include Florida Department of Transportation grants and the half-percent transportation sales surtax that the Citizens’ Independent Transportation Trust oversees.

Documents from the federal government state that 9,400 daily trips are projected on the new corridor when it opens, totaling more than 2.77 million per year. The forecast sees 17,100 daily trips by 2045, totaling more than 5 million yearly.