OFF ROAD: Central Floridians test-ride the trains that will be used in the rail system.

Central Florida leaders have green-lighted a $615-million plan for a 61-mile train system that will carry commuters through Volusia, Seminole, Orange and Osceola counties [see article “Making Tracks” published December 2006].

The Florida Department of Transportation is spending an additional $173 million to purchase railroad tracks from CSX, which will relocate freight traffic and operations. DOT will oversee the system for the first seven years before turning it over to the newly formed Central Florida Rail Commission, composed of representatives from the four counties and the city of Orlando.

During the first phase, set to open in 2010, trains will operate every 30 minutes during peak morning and evening hours, traveling between Fort Florida Road in Volusia through Seminole County to Sand Lake Road in Orange. A second phase in 2013 will extend the line north to DeLand in Volusia and south to Poinciana Industrial Park in Osceola.

“As important as this is, we see this as the first piece of a larger regional system,” says Harry Barley, executive director of Metroplan Orlando, a regional transportation partnership coordinating the commission’s efforts.

The project comes as the DOT is seeking funding for massive reconstruction of I-4 that would improve as many as 10 interchanges and add two high-occupancy vehicle lanes in each direction between State Road 434 in Longwood and Kirkman Road in Orlando. According to a 2003 study, Orlando drivers lose $510 a year in time and fuel creeping along during rush hour, says Noranne Downs, secretary of DOT District 5. “So you can imagine what it is in 2007,” she says. “Each year, it’s gotten worse and worse.”

Initial projections, based on federal formulas, forecast the equivalent of 3,600 to 4,400 one-way rail trips per day, increasing by 2030 to between 10,600 and 13,000. Area transportation officials say those numbers could be conservative.

“Eventually we’ll see a paradigm shift,” Downs says. “Central Florida is especially a melting pot. Many people moving here now are used to public transit. And everybody you can get on the train is not going to be on I-4.”