Passenger Trains > A few AAF tidbits

Couple of points -

Martin County is hiring more lawyers and an engineering firm to examine All Aboard Florida's plans.

AAF says, for the first time, a stop in Stuart isn't off the table. First time that's been said as far as I know.

Lots of construction activity at the West Palm Beach office complex, station.

Construction activity at the AAF facility at the WPB rail yard. Visible from the Palm Beach Lakes overpass.

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Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> Couple of points -
>
> Martin County is hiring more lawyers and an
> engineering firm to examine All Aboard Florida's
> plans.
>
> AAF says, for the first time, a stop in Stuart
> isn't off the table. First time that's been said
> as far as I know.

I have a strong urge to say "I told you this was going to happen" at this point :)

The site selection for a station in Brevard County is pretty far along with concrete proposals ready for vetting in a few more months.  In the running are four possible sites: Cocoa, Rockledge, Melbourne and Palm Bay. Initially there will be one selected with a possibility of a second later.

It would surprise me if the Orlando extension does not open with stations in Melbourne or Cocoa (with a shuttle to Kennedy Space Center and the Cruise Port) and Stuart.

The AAF people could have saved themselves a lot of grief by saying Stuart, Vero, Melbourne stations etc were in some vague phase 2.

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They did say so to Brevard County which cooperated with them. They delayed saying so to counties that are still busy taking legal action against them.

As for Brevard, even the county could not agree that the station should be in Melbourne or Cocoa. It has included four locations in the study from which one will be selected later this year or early next year. But it will be executed after 2019. At least initially there will be only one station in Brevard County, not two. Also there is no current plan to provide any shuttle service to Port Canaveral. That might come later. The only way there will be shuttle to KSC is if KSC chooses to run it, all assuming that the Brevard station is at the Cocoa or Rockledge proposed sites.

Surprise or not, according to current plans, the service to Orlando will start without any station between WPB and Orlando. The negotiations that needs to happen with Central Florida Toll Authority are yet to take place to allow providing service from any station between WPB and Orlando and Orlando. That is written into the agreement that gives AAF access to the Beachline Tollway RoW. The current speculation is that there will be a surcharge of perhaps a dollar or a bit more per ticket between Brevard County and Orlando to make good the projected loss of revenue on the tollway for the bond holders on the tollway bonds.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 02/11/16 10:50 by Jishnu.

I have walked around Melbourne for the past 12 years, while visiting my kids who live there.  I really don't see any site which could happen quickly in downtown area.  It would take land purchases for parking lots and building.  Nothing quick or cheap about that process.  And then who pays for the station?   AAF or Melbourne or ?

MEKoch Wrote:
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> I have walked around Melbourne for the past 12
> years, while visiting my kids who live there.  I
> really don't see any site which could happen
> quickly in downtown area.  It would take land
> purchases for parking lots and building.  Nothing
> quick or cheap about that process.  And then who
> pays for the station?   AAF or Melbourne or ?

I know that Melbourne has submitted a proposal. I don't know what is in it. Possibly it is a rehash of what was proposed for the Amtrak on FEC EIS, which was a location by the airport, lots of open unused land with quite a bit of it owned by FEC. The location is just north of where S Apollo Blvd crosses Babcock and Babcock crosses the FEC tracks. The space is between the railroad tracks and S. Apollo Blvd. Should be no problem finding space for a large parking lot or structure and also for FECI office and residential property development, which seems to go hand in hand with any AAF station development. typically the real estate development then pays for the ioperation of the station. They might need to adjust the location a little in order to not create incursions into the glide slope for the main runway of Melbourne International. As for who pays initially in what proportion is as usual a matter of negotiation. Any funding agreements will be with the County and not with individual cities, sicne the County is the primary negotiator with AAF/FECI/FECR for things like grade crossing mitigations and such, and rpesumably for other matters like station funding. The location of course is negotiated jointly by the County and the City involved.

Again, I don't know what Melbourne has proposed this time around. But that is the location they proposed in the application for the Stimulus grant for the Amtrak on FEC project.

BTW, I live in West Melbourne, and usually try to get to as many of the West Melbourne and Melbourne city meetings as well as the Brevard County Commissioners meetings where such things of interest are on the agenda.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/12/16 05:51 by Jishnu.