An Amtrak station was built at the Miami airport, and after three decades of development the government rail corporation has decided not to use it. It was completed eight years ago, and they’re just walking away.
In 1997, Amtrak and the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) signed an agreement to include Amtrak service in the [Miami Intermodal Center] project, which influenced the MIC’s development. Despite these intentions, the Amtrak station has remained unused since its completion in 2016.
Negotiations over the lease and operational details persisted for years, with updates suggesting progress as recently as mid-2024. However, Amtrak ultimately determined that extending its Silver Meteor and Silver Star services from their current terminus in Hialeah to MIA would be financially prohibitive.
Miami Intermodal Center, credit: Phillip Pessar via Wikimedia Commons
This comes after Florid “reconstructing a local road, creating a bypass, and adding a signalized intersection, to accommodate Amtrak’s service.” So no Amtrak to the Miami airport. And, ok, sunk costs and all but… after 28 years of work?
The Empire State Building took one year and 45 days from construction state to opening, beginning March 17, 1930, and having its official open May 1, 1931. We used to build things in this country. In many parts of the world, they still do. We do spend money, though, like the new $8.8 billion redevelopment plan for Union Station in Washington, D.C.expected to be complete after 2040 and that’ll likely be pushed back.
And they… revised the plan to reduce parking because opponents felt they had too much, even though exactly what you want is for people to be able to show up at the station and take the train instead of drive.
At D.C.’s Union Station last week, Amtrak left behind 100 passengers on the last train the day after Christmas because employees couldn’t be bothered.
Before the pandemic, former Delta CEO Richard Anderson was brought in to try to fix the mess at Amtrak. But Amtrak doesn’t want to be fixed, and he got bounced for his efforts. The 2022 federal infrastructure bill committed an additional $66 billion to Amtrak, but the government train corporation’s fundamental problems aren’t fixable just with money.
Nearly 30 years ago Jay Leno responded to an Amtrak ad with a couple cozying up next to each other on a train, saying that he always knew near-death experiences brought people together. At the time Amtrak was planning to let go of 600 managers, but Leno said they weren’t actually going to be fired, Amtrak was just going to put them on a train…
This article is very mean spirited on New Year’s Eve no less. Amtrak is a victim of car culture that became overblown in the US outside the northeast region.
Amtrak tickets can be purchased with pre-tax commuter benefits. Employers often subsidize such benefits and employees often have a lot left over. Free Acela first class from NYP to BOS or WAS, free meal and drinks included? I’ll take it, wouldn’t you.
Miami airport has reasonable connection to commuter rail.
Aside from the Acela corridor, Amtrak needs to be DOGE’d.
I’m a fan of car culture. Mass transit sucks. Rail outside of a few areas of the country isn’t viable. We need to stop trying to make nationwide rail happen, it just isn’t a worthwhile option when flying or driving is faster and more comfortable.
Gary
Would operating the station makes sense going forward? I gather that AMTRAK doesn’t think so and seem to be “cutting their losses”
Please explain why they shouldn’t do this now.
What a shame. I hoped this post would be shitting on MIA airport, which deserves criticism, since some of its terminals are ancient and disjointed, and it does not have enough parking capacity.
Instead, the post is shitting on trains while conflating unfounded hate of ‘big’ government with a ‘red’ state that doesn’t care about anything but protecting wealthy tax-cheats, bigoted retires, reckless gun-culture, nationalistic patriarchal theocracy, and boating on Intracoastal proudly flying MAGA/Nazi/Confederate flags.
I grew up in that cesspool and do not go back unless I am getting paid a lot to do so. There are much better beaches and people elsewhere. Florida is the ultimate shit-hole, as Dear Leader once said about countries where brown people come from.
One of the only good things about climate change is that when the seas rise it will finally rid us of this hell on earth. A glorious day that will be. Praise!!
Nothing new. Governments waste a lot of money. Our small town wastes money. We can see the check register during city council meetings.
Seattle has Sound Transit that waste billions. They have a train to the airport that is slower than the previous bus route. The train also goes to useless places. Buses are better unless there are millions of users. Now with the internet, it’s easy to fine bus routes unlike decades ago when maps and brochures needed
The current Miami Amtrak station is south of the airport in an industrial area with no hotels or restaurants nearby. The area is sketchy at best, even cabs don’t want to go there after dark, which is when many trains get there.
America does infrastructure poorly. Always has. Projects end up being far more expensive than they need to be because too much taxpayer money goes to fund pork barrel nonsense like NASA, nation building, and rebuilding in locales that are constantly exposed to climate change issues. The rest of the developed world runs laps around the United States when it comes to infrastructure.
Now do California high speed rail for a real waste of resources. The failure of so many infrastructure projects in the US can be blamed squarely on Democrats looking to virtue signal while buying votes woih work programs for union buddies, their environmentalist friends who inflate the cost because of their desire for humanity to die off, and their lawyer friends happy to profit off all this dysfunction by tying up any project in court.
But 1990, the thumb sucking leftist intellectual with severe TDS, likes trains, so there’s that.
Given the extreme amount of violent crime in many urban areas, combined with unreliability, surface-based mass transit in America (rail, subways, & buses) is borderline usable. To overcome this issue, several private-cabin mass transit systems have been theorized (including hyperloop systems, systems based upon private vehicles which are virtually linked using controls, and systems based upon private vehicles which allow seamless entry and exit off of a continuously moving platform). It will probably take the development of some of these to drive a high rate of adoption.
I remember Mantis opined in July that an airport terminal roof collapse in Delhi would not have happened under the private sector. Which ignored the fact that Delhi airport was built and is operated by private companies.
It must be wonderful to not have to bother with facts when commenting on transit. Then again, it’s what one would expect from a Trump acolyte.
The primary objective of these big infrastructure government projects is not to end up with usable infrastructure. Rather the primary objective is to funnel billions of dollars to politically connected democrats and consultants. And don’t forget to make sure the big guy gets his 10%.
@Mantis “Now do California high speed rail ”
See for instance https://viewfromthewing.com/californias-high-speed-rail-is-a-20-year-100-billion-joke-ethereums-founder-knows-what-to-do/
To be fair, did anyone ask the OnlyFans content creators, influencers, models, fintech bros, and the Cuban chiro/healthcare fraud insurance scammers if they wanted an Amtrak station? Nope. It won’t be used by the people that make Miami run and I’m not talking about Dunkin.
@derek Sound Transit has it’s issues, no doubt. But, that line to the SEA airport is now carrying an average of 100,000 passengers daily. If you’ve been on it anytime recently, it’s jammed during afternoons.
Having helped plan multiple bus routes to/from SEA in the past 25 years, I can also tell you that there is no way any bus route from SEA to downtown would be carrying the passenger loads LINK is carrying now. Not enough capacity and you have to deal with the massive traffic slowdowns getting in and out. It can and does support train service, and clearly people are using it.
The US has an overwhelming lobby from its road and car industries, media shills like yourself constantly putting forward the lie that there is no benefit in public transport beyond the fares collected.
@Jon F Good memory and great callback to yet another idiotic ‘hot take’ from @Mantis — Right-wing trolls like him only ‘get it’ when it affects them personally, and by then, it’s too late.
@harry hv
There’s already public transit at MIA you dimwit. Light rail for the local residents. Amtrak might be government run but it takes a real stretch to consider it public transport like light rail or bus.
@Jon F
Nope, never wrote it. Show me the link. But nice strawman, as if somehow that makes US democrat boondoggles OK.
@1990
You’ll never get anything unless government gives it to you, that much is clear.
Amtrak should be spun off into a private company. Either it can succeed or not on it’s own merits. Anything else is socialism.
Anderson dis not try improve service, actually ran it like a budget airline, dont give him any credit. Airlines are not a great example of great service. As for Miami the station was poorly designed and did not accomodate the length of trains required to back up for miles. Yes blame is all around.
30 years of development sounds like a lot of years of arrested development.
I’d kind of hoped to read why Amtrak chose not to do this rather than take what looks like cheap potshots at Amtrak. How about going into specifics on viable ways to make improvements?
@RC you might be in favor of car-only culture because you haven’t experienced a place where rail systems are reliable, fast, numerous, and the trains go where people want to go. I have visited and lived in many places in which that is the reality. It is cheaper for people to use, safer, and far better for the environment.
Those complaining about Democrats wasting money on rail projects – kindly note a former Florida governor refused as financially unsound Federal funds to build high-speed rail to connect Tampa to Orlando and Miami and then invested in a private company that built a system that currently goes from Orlando to Miami, with Tampa expansion plans. This high-speed rail system has one of the highest fatality rates in the nation ( the hit pedestrians and vehicles on the rails) and recently struck a fire engine at a grade crossing. As a person many decades ago said about cars: “Unsafe at any speed?”
Critics should also note the joy of driving on I-4 from Tampa to Orlando 120 miles and sitting in the comfort of a car for 3 – 4 hours.This is what made America great.
Critics have likely never ridden a high-speed train in Europe (which I have) or in another part of the world and seen that they WORK. We are becoming a transportation backwater.
And I would like the author to explain to me what the joy of flying through today’s disruptive passenger, screaming baby, and seat squatter filled flights and dysfunctional airport and baggage transport systems is. Somehow, I am missing the wonder and thrill of all of this.
Hope elon and Vivek kill Amtrak once and for all.
The “joy” of driving I-4 from Tampa to Orlando ? That’s funny. The Bright line train hit the fire truck because the fire truck tried to cross with barrier down after freight moved on the track in the opposite direction. So, you would throw away a viable train system because American drivers can’t deal with crossings?
Just stay in your cars and wonder why every year is hotter then the last. Some people need trains. Screw everyone that does not drive. Take your car culture and shove it already!
Journalism at its finest. There’s no attempt to explore what went wrong or why the station will not be used. It’s just a long rant meant to imply it should have been abandoned sooner or never started at all.
Why? We’ll never know because maybe 5 minutes of actual research was put into the story. The real purpose of the story was to get some opinion validation from the crowd that complain that trains can’t work despite nearly every country in Europe and Asia proving that idea wrong. The ones who complain the government can’t build anything and that trains aren’t profitable but yet aren’t screaming for more toll roads.
Public highways and bridges don’t make money. How many people use a highway to some small town in Wyoming? Why is that worth the expense? Because people are hypocrites. Simply they don’t want investment in trains because they and people that vote like them don’t use trains. Therefore bad. They are more than happy to take city money to pay for local infrastructure and would scream the loudest if services were truly privatized and they had to pay for their own.
They’ve never put any thought into what a libertarian paradise would actually look like a how it would function. It’s only socialism when someone else gets the benefit. Otherwise it’s a necessary public service.
Amtrak really needs to explain why running a 1000 mile train line an extra 4 miles on existing track (track that is already used for commuter rail) is “financially prohibitive.”
The current Miami Amtrak Station isn’t horrible. It’s next to a Metro Station. However extending to the Airport Station would unquestionably be better.
1990 really REALLY needs to have the doctor up the voltage on the next visit. I rarely hear such inane maniacal ranting like that.
Just went Coast to Coast on Amtrak. The best travel experience of my life. The on-train steward was so glad to see me and so helpful. And the restaurant staff was brilliant. I have become so used to the insults and eye rolls of airport staff; it was quite the change!
Gary it sounds like you’re having a bad day. As a longterm reader, I know you’re better than this hodgepodge of half-baked Amtrak potshots.
What do you expect? Florida is the herpes infested crotch of America
Barry – Brightline is privately owned & funded high speed rail between Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach-Orlando. It only took a few years to build & become operational – shame it didn’t go the airport, but the station isn’t far. One hundred people have been killed by the train since it started operations. ALL of the deaths (and the firetruck accident) were because the people dodged the clearly marked safety barriers, which were recently enhanced. You can’t fix careless or stupid.
Amtrak will never be financially viable. It will always be subsidized by federal and state funds. The HSR project in CA will never be completed. Another waste of our tax $’s.
Passenger rail in the US hasn’t been profitable since the 50’s and much of that profit was related to transporting mail. The interstate highway system started by Eisenhower killed the need for any medium to long distance passenger trains.
Trains work in Europe because it’s geographically smaller and more densely populated. Also, many passenger trains have their own dedicated high speed tracks.
As long as Amtrak has to share rails owned by freight railroads, its trains will run at the leisurely (and occasionally late) pace they do.
That said, Amtrak provides a transportation lifeline to many small communities in rural America that no longer benefit from the largesse of the Essential Air Service Act subsidies. Also, it’s an enjoyable and scenic way to travel – especially across western America. And, I dare say it’s more civilized, with passengers actually interacting with fellow passengers over drinks and dinner at a table in the diner or while enjoying the passing scenery in the lounge car. And to then have a private roomette or bedroom to lay down in at the end of the day… heavenly.
Richard Anderson never understood the nuance of American train travel. Yes, it’s never gonna make a profit systemwide given its current arrangement with the freight railroads, but it sure beats the bus In traveling to hundreds of rural communities and provides comfortable, scenic, relaxed and more often than not enjoyable transport.
Who was the U.S. Senator who always pushed Amtrak? He of course, could get home very quickly to Delaware. All for me, and I don’t care what the U.S. taxpayers have to pay.
Worst POTUS EVER! Look how much waste of lives and Money was left in Afghanistan withdrawal. Millions given to Electric car industry and on and on…. This man was never fit or qualified to serve the people. Though, I suppose people in his state felt sorry about his wife driving on the wrong side of the road. And kept voting for him….Duh?
I love when people say “rail just isn’t viable in America” and yet it is viable in the vast majority of the world where planes and cars may also be faster. Hint: people want frequent, affordable service. “Amtrak always loses money!” Um, when was the last time the interstate highway system turned a profit?