Tri-Rail would offer free rides to Overtown district residents in station deal
Tri-Rail would offer free passes to large numbers of Overtown residents in exchange for public funding of a new Miami station, part of a deal aimed at piecing together $69 million in tax dollars to bring the commuter line to a privately funded train depot downtown.
The largely state-funded Tri-Rail would offer free passes to residents inside Miami’s Overtown/Park West taxing district in exchange for extracting about $30 million from the entity for construction of a Tri-Rail platform in All Aboard Florida’s rail complex that’s about to begin construction in downtown Miami.
Tri-Rail and All Aboard, a subsidiary of the Florida East Coast Industries real estate company, want to bring the tax-funded commuter line to the station as a way to expand Tri-Rail’s reach into the heart of downtown Miami. At the moment, commuters from downtown must take Miami-Dade’s Metrorail line nine miles to the Hialeah area to link up with Tri-Rail, which runs trains to just north of West Palm Beach. The proposed addition to All Aboard would let Tri-Rail riders bypass Metrorail’s six stops and instead take a direct line from downtown to the rail line’s northern points.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article16221608.html
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F.Y.I. Overtown is one of the poorest areas in the Miami area. As a matter of fact drugs, gang activity, and homelessness can be seen in this area. Though some of it has been cleaned up it still has a ways to go. Oddly enough there are high rises built a few blocks from where overtown sits. I would not be surprised if this is one of those deals where the riff raff are arrested, the property values sky rocket, and its residents are forced to leave to cheaper and more crime ridden areas.
