[sunrico90]

Anyone using the service? Feedback?????

Tri-Rail set a record in 2006 when it carried more than 3 million passengers in a single calendar year, the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority said on Tuesday.

The total passenger count for 2006 was 3,177,573, a 21.2 percent jump over last year's ridership of 2,619,693, the authority said in a prepared release.

The highest annual passenger count before that was the 2,911,560 riders recorded in 1993, when commuting patterns changed due to the impact of Hurricane Andrew.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...sfla-news-sfla

[bale002]

We discussed transportation in a thread a few months back.

As for southeastern Florida, the Tri-Rail is certainly better than nothing. However, for a three-county commute on a daily basis, the system is hardly effective in my view. The runs are too infrequent (every hour during the weekday, they need to be every half-hour, every two hours on the weekend) and the speed is way too slow (in Europe, where the standard guage system already works pretty well, they are investing billions in high speed trains). Perhaps with more volume, the transport authority may decide to increase the frequency of the runs.

However, the overall design of the system, from its geographical layout, the lack of access to town centers, to the clumsy links to the airports, the mediocre quality of the cars, and the lack of speed, all suggest that the entire system has been implemented only begrudgingly and the transportation policy in this country is still sickly lopsided towards private cars.

In short, even a country like Bulgaria has a better balanced transportation system than the United States, and the imbalances of the US transportation system are reflected in this country's sickly imbalanced and misguided foreign policy. You figure it out.

Nonetheless, the Tri-Rail system, like the Metrorail in Dade County (still just one line) is better than nothing and there is at least hope that these systems can be improved and extended in future.

[bunnywabbit!]

I have never used it. It's too far inland and requires taking another bus to get to the coastline or any attractions.

[bale002]

Originally Posted by bunnywabbit!

I have never used it. It's too far inland and requires taking another bus to get to the coastline or any attractions.

Exactly. That's part of what I meant by geographical layout and lack of access to town centers.

It's obvious that the mediocre people who designed the system never had experience in the rest of the civilized world.