The road closures in our area this year were a mess. In April 2017 I started getting lots of communications from Highland Oaks Middle school that Miami Gardens Drive ("MGD") was going to experience a disruptive closure. As it turned out, that was "fake news" as Brightline (the operator of All Aboard Florida ("AAF")) had in fact postponed that work to everyone's great relief. All indications were that the work would be completed in the summer.
On May 12 I wrote Ms. Ali Soule (Director of Public Affairs for AAF):
"Keep in mind that schools resume on Monday, August 21. If you are targeting "late July or early August" for MGD, that should work perfectly, but things will become very crazy on August 21, so hopefully MGD will be completed before then."
On July 6 I followed up with her for an update. She wrote back the same day "Hi, Mark. We are still working on our schedule. I should have a better idea next week and will follow up with you. Thanks!"
On July 23 I wrote Ali: "Still no word on MGD improvements? First day of school is just 29 days away." Her reply the next day: "Mark, our schedule has shifted, and we will not be able to complete MGD before school begins. I will let you know when it has been put on the schedule. Thanks."
The result, we all now know, was that MGD was closed, for some unknown reason many surrounding roads like WDH were also closed, and it was a cluster-f.
The "light at the end of the tunnel" though was that the train horns would stop going off all night, right?
The establishment of a "Quiet Zone" is described in the Federal Railway Administration's "Horn and Quiet Zone Fact Sheet". That sheet describes how the affected government (MDC in this case) drives the process, and the Miami Herald reported (here) that it was the County's Transportation Planning Organization ("TPO") specifically that owned the issue.
... Which is why I was confused when I spoke with TPO's Intergovernmental Affairs Coordinator Bradley Woodson to ask where things stood on the Quiet Zone now that (in November) the crossing improvements were now complete. I was confused because Woodson advised me that he didn't "have any concrete information at the moment. All I’m able to tell you for now is that the quiet zones are still in the project, but as of the status, it would have to come from Mr. Lefevre [Operations Control Center Director for AAF]".
So even though a Quiet Zone is established by a government, here the government was directing me to the train operator. Strange.
So moving on to Mr. Lefevre, I was advised: "the additional signal equipment required for the quiet zone is being installed as part of the AAF construction project, which is why the timing of AAF’s service start and the quiet zone establishment are correlated.... Service into Miami will begin in the first quarter of 2018. There is a mandatory 21-day period between filing the Notice of Establishment and the effective date of the quiet zone, and there is a process of application and inspection to go through with the Federal Railroad Administration, but we are working collaboratively with the MPO and Miami-Dade County on this process."
So when will those of us here in the east part of "West of Aventura" be able to open our windows at night for some fresh air and NO train horn noise at all hours? The answer is still blowing (a train horn) in the wind.
