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Florida officials know exactly how to reduce train deaths.
The blueprint is in a set of documents the Miami Herald/WLRN obtained after threatening to sue state transportation officials who withheld them. The plans range from the basic — improve warning signs and lighting — to the unconventional — AI and sensors to alert train engineers of trouble ahead.
Florida’s new rules for rail crossings take effect Jan. 1, aimed at reducing the number of drivers and pedestrians killed by trains. The rail manual is a substantial rewrite of what is currently in place and applies to new projects starting in 2026. Dozens of safety features that were previously optional will be mandatory.
Under the previous regulations, for example, it was optional to post a sign warning, “DO NOT STOP ON TRACKS,” at higher-speed crossings. The new regulations make the signs mandatory and require LED lighting. In 123 instances, “shoulds” or “mays” in the rail crossing manual were changed to “musts.”
But the higher standards won’t lead to wholesale change along the deadly Brightline corridor. The rules are for new projects, not existing ones. State leaders, including Gov. Ron DeSantis and Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared Perdue, have refused to answer reporters’ questions about how the new regulations are expected to impact public safety.
Some new safety measures are coming, slowly, to the corridor, but they will be piecemeal. They are largely publicly funded, including by local governments choosing to invest in added barriers around the tracks as Brightline deaths have continued unabated.
The Miami Herald and WLRN, South Florida’s NPR member station, spent the year investigating the shocking fatality rate of the privately owned Brightline passenger train, which has killed someone every 13 days, on average, since 2018.
The reporting team encountered the same safety solutions repeatedly in studies, interviews with experts and the state’s new rail guidelines. And many of them are missing along the Brightline rail corridor, where 195 people have been killed — 32 of them this year.
These are some of the solutions that experts say could be most effective:
Putting up fencing
Most Brightline tracks are at street level, intersecting with busy roadways. Vast stretches of track between crossings are exposed, and nothing prevents a person from walking across them on their way to work, church or the bar.
In the past, Brightline resisted calls for more fencing, saying it was pricey to install and ineffective at stopping people from crossing where they shouldn’t.
But research shows it can be effective.
In the two years after putting up fencing in the Sanford area, SunRail, Central Florida’s commuter train, saw a 91% reduction in people wrongfully crossing the tracks.
Tri-Rail, a South Florida commuter system west of the Brightline, is installing fencing that is angled at the top, making it difficult to climb over.
Pompano Beach Mayor Rex Hardin said he hopes fencing will help reduce deaths in his city by making it more difficult for pedestrians to get to the tracks. Eighteen people have been killed there — the highest death toll of any city that Brightline passes through.
“We have such a large open area where folks can just walk right across the tracks,” Hardin said. Using state and federal grants, the city aims to fence off the tracks for miles along Dixie Highway.
Fencing is also coming to a number of pedestrian hotspots along Brightline’s route from Miami to Cocoa.
In 2022, the Florida Department of Transportation applied for a federal grant that included 33 miles of fencing and vegetation to border the tracks, at a cost of nearly $19 million.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who released the funds this fall after years of delay, vowed to help reduce Brightline deaths “to zero” in a congressional committee meeting the day after the Miami Herald/WLRN published the first story in its ”Killer Train” investigation.
Like other safety projects, much of the fencing has not yet been installed. Since August 2022, when the grant was approved, 119 people have been struck and killed by Brightline trains, reporters found. Seven people have been struck and killed since the funds were released in mid-September.
“Too many families in South Florida have buried loved ones because of preventable rail deaths,” U.S. Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Miami Gardens, told the Miami Herald in a written statement. Wilson, who sits on the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, brought up the investigation that day, asking Duffy for help.
In Hollywood, the city with the second-highest death toll, a city spokeswoman said plans to erect fencing along the entire rail span will be “a game-changer to improve safety.” Sixteen people have been struck and killed in Hollywood, reporters found.
That still leaves long stretches of the 195-mile corridor from Miami to Cocoa exposed, but the fencing will be placed where pedestrian crossings are common, state officials said.
Brightline officials have emphasized that many of the deaths on the tracks are suicides and are difficult to prevent.
But experts say barriers around train tracks can help.
Jill Harkavy-Friedman, the senior vice president of research at the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, said the idea that suicide is unpreventable is “so off the mark.”
People in crisis are often hyperfocused in their thinking, meaning deterrents can help steer them away from acting on an idea.
“If it’s more difficult, it reduces the number of people who can do it,” Harkavy-Friedman said.
The reporting team found that of the 195 deaths, about 43% have been ruled suicides by medical examiners. Barriers, combined with crisis signs, lighting near the tracks and phones to call for help, can save lives.
“The best way to prevent suicide deaths is to limit access to lethal means,” Harkavy-Friedman said.
Blowing train horns
Brightline deaths are captured by video cameras inside the train cab. That’s how authorities know that in some cases, people expressed surprise and tried to leap out of the way at the last moment.
Had they heard a train horn sooner, they might not have been struck.
Often, those people were walking along the tracks or crossing on foot at locations with no gates, bells or lights — an act that’s both illegal and epidemic along the tracks shared by Brightline and the Florida East Coast Railway (FEC).
Brightline trains are swift and quiet, and along much of the corridor, they only blow their horns in an emergency. By then, because of the train’s speed — 79 mph in South Florida and up to 110 mph along the Treasure Coast — it can be too late.
A 64-year-old man in Miami, for example, was walking along the tracks in December 2021, with his head down. When the train conductor saw him and blew the emergency horn, the man “attempted to avoid the train” but didn’t have enough time, according to a police report. He died on impact.
Typically, under federal regulations, trains blow two long blasts, one short blast and another long one when they approach rail crossings.
But city and county officials in Miami-Dade, Broward and parts of Palm Beach County followed a federal process to fortify crossings and allow trains to pass through silently. Deaths spiked in the “quiet zones” after Brightline launched.
In Broward, federal officials launched an investigation into the quiet zone fatalities in 2022. The feds ultimately allowed the zone to remain quiet and awarded local agencies $15 million to make 21 crossings safer. That work has not been completed because of delays in the release of funding.
Local leaders are likely to resist any calls to bring back the horn.
Greg Stuart, executive director of the Broward Metropolitan Planning Organization — which led Broward County’s quiet zone effort — said he doesn’t believe the train’s silence is the problem. The addition of things like plastic bollards to keep drivers from going around downed gates has made a difference.
Still, over the last three years — 2022 through 2024 — Brightline trains were involved in 51 collisions at crossings in Broward County, according to federal data.
Even in quiet zones, stationary horns known as wayside horns can be added to crossings to simulate the sound of a train horn without disrupting entire neighborhoods. Or horns could be restricted to daylight hours.
Some in the rail industry say there’s no substitute for the blare of a train horn.
“It doesn’t matter where you come from, you know what the horn of a train means,” said Andres Trujillo, the Florida legislative director for a union that represents Florida East Coast Railway workers.
Making crossings foolproof
Police incident files show that drivers continue to stop on the tracks or drive around closed gates at crossings — and right into the path of Brightline trains. The state’s new regulations confirm that much can be done to prevent that.
“I’ve railroaded all over the country,” said Dave Dech, executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, which runs the Tri-Rail commuter system west of the Brightline tracks. “Never in my life have I seen people queue up on railroad tracks like they do here. I don’t know what it is in this culture here in South Florida, where people love to stop on railroad tracks.”
Roadway design is part of the problem. The Brightline corridor runs close to major highways like U.S. 1, meaning cars often have little space to line up before ending up on the tracks. It intersects 331 street crossings, and in some places, roads intersect the tracks at skewed angles.
When Brightline launched, many crossings had just two gates — one on each side of the road, making it easy for people to drive around them. “Quad gates” include four gates so each lane is blocked. About 31% of Brightline crossings still have just two gates, a company spokesman said.
Another tool is the installation of concrete medians that keep drivers in their own lane. Some, but not all, Brightline crossings have bollards or medians.
Painting white Xs on the asphalt in a design known as a “dynamic envelope” can direct drivers to stop before reaching the tracks.
At crossings with a nearby traffic signal, drivers waiting for a green light can get trapped on the tracks even if they didn’t maneuver around a closed gate. An “escape lane” can provide a place for drivers to go in emergencies.
Traffic signals can also be set to keep the tracks clear when a train is approaching, in a system known as “preemption.”
Digital signs at crossings can warn: “Second train coming.” Brightline has used digital signage on occasion.
The enhanced protections at crossings can help address confusion that leads to accidents.
People for decades grew used to slower, longer freight trains that can take several minutes to roll through crossings. Brightline and FEC freight trains can come and go on two parallel sets of tracks in either direction — or the same direction — at the same time.
A 42-year-old man in Lantana died in March 2022 when he was standing on the west tracks waiting for a freight train to pass on the east tracks. He “never realized that another train (Brightline train) was coming,” a medical examiner’s report explained.
“It’s just all so new that no one really has that second-nature feel, at least not for the Brightline,” said Jodi Godfrey, a rail safety researcher in Florida. “I think eventually it will be ingrained in the environment and people will react to it a lot better than they do now.”
Several transit systems across Europe and Japan have started to roll out new technology to detect when pedestrians and vehicles are in danger. Those detection systems, based on some combination of AI-powered video analysis and fiber optic, laser and radar sensors, can alert train operators and integrate with signaling systems.
The U.S. Federal Railroad Administration has supported research into those systems, and Caltrain, a commuter train line in Northern California, piloted the technology at select crossings. After Caltrain installed a system called RailSentry, operators counted improper turns onto the tracks and upgraded safety measures in response to higher-than-expected numbers. The upgrades worked, curtailing the problem.
Japanese transit systems also have used emergency alert buttons at crossings to signal an obstruction to train operators.
In its early days, Brightline used “vehicle presence detection” technology at crossings that triggered gate arms to open if a car was stuck on the tracks. But the company stopped using the technology amid concerns that torrential rain caused gates to go up when they shouldn’t.
Brightline also was awarded a $1.6 million federal grant in 2023 to use an AI-backed system to collect data on trespassing along the tracks. The money was released in September.
Separating trains from traffic
The most effective way to prevent deaths on railroad tracks — separating roads from the tracks entirely — is also the most challenging.
The Brightline corridor is one of the most heavily populated zones in the United States, where trains run at fast speeds at street level.
In many other places across the nation and world, fast trains are elevated, underground or otherwise physically separated from drivers and pedestrians.
That layout — known as “grade separation” — is only in place for Brightline’s final leg from Cocoa to Orlando, where the trains run at 125 mph on fenced-off tracks parallel to the Beachline Expressway.
Separation is accomplished by building elevated tracks, like Metrorail in Miami, or building tunnels or trenches to take trains below street level.
Early plans for a new leg of Brightline from Orlando to Tampa place it largely along the Interstate 4 corridor, separated from local traffic.
For people on foot, grade separation can mean a pedestrian bridge over the tracks that allows safe passageway. In Broward, a pedestrian overpass is proposed to get people safely over the tracks in Oakland Park.
Broward transportation planners are also actively exploring train underpasses for Brightline and FEC freight trains at five busy crossings: Sunrise Boulevard, Andrews Avenue, Sistrunk Boulevard, Broward Boulevard and Davie Boulevard.
It’s expensive. In Aventura, elevating 203rd Street above the Brightline/FEC tracks and building a pedestrian bridge, among other improvements, took four years to complete and cost nearly $44 million.
Caltrain is looking to separate numerous crossings from people and traffic through publicly funded projects that could cost billions of dollars.
In 2010, a statewide rail system plan in Florida identified $510 million in grade separation needs along the FEC corridor that Brightline shares.
Eliminating intersections where cars pass over the tracks is also an effective way to separate roads from trains. And it’s cheaper than grade separation.
But those road closures are difficult to pull off because local governments often object. In Hollywood, city officials last December canned a proposal to close the Garfield Street crossing, citing fears of traffic congestion.
“If it’s all jammed up,” Mayor Josh Levy said, “then that’s not a good thing for us in any way.”
Florida mum about safety reforms
In response to the high death toll, Florida transportation officials have been drafting new rulebooks for higher-speed rail and for rail in general. But they refused to discuss the reforms with reporters and excluded the public from a recent meeting related to rail safety.
The Miami Herald obtained draft versions of the rulebooks earlier this year after threatening to sue the Florida Department of Transportation.
The updated Florida Department of Transportation Design Manual was publicly released in November, five months after the Miami Herald had first requested it.
In addition, an upcoming “Higher-Speed At-Grade Railroad Crossings Manual” puts into writing for the first time what a system like Brightline’s should look like in Florida.
Stricter than federal rules, it would apply to trains that run at street level at speeds of 80 mph to 110 mph and would mandate more safety features. For Brightline, that’s from West Palm Beach to Cocoa because the train’s speeds are limited to 79 mph farther south.
The 73-page manual was marked as a draft when released to the Miami Herald in September. Like the Florida Department of Transportation Design Manual, it would apply to future projects.
State officials have been inexplicably mum about the reforms.
The governor raised concern about Brightline deaths in 2019, calling on FDOT to look into the issue. But when asked by the Miami Herald recently about the state’s effort to reduce rail fatalities, a spokeswoman for DeSantis said only: “Our advice is to get off the tracks when the train is coming through.”
FDOT spokesman Michael Williams and several other state transportation officials did not respond to phone calls or emails about whether the new rules would apply to a South Florida commuter rail system that is planned on the Brightline/FEC tracks and will bring even more trains to the busy corridor.
Reporters could not attend a meeting of the state’s relatively new Rail Safety Coalition, which reviewed and discussed the new rules, because the group canceled its August meeting after the Miami Herald/WLRN published its first ”Killer Train” story. The coalition held its subsequent meeting in November effectively in secret, without offering an agenda or a livestream like it had for past meetings.
State transportation officials, including the communications staff, declined to tell reporters where or when the meeting would be held and have refused to release an agenda or backup materials to reporters or the Miami Herald’s attorney. The coalition doesn’t meet again until next year.
Dech, the Tri-Rail director, is a coalition member and attended the November meeting but said he’s not directly involved in reviewing the new rail rules. Florida has many rail systems and too many fatalities, said Dech, who is vice chairman of Florida Operation Lifesaver, a nonprofit dedicated to rail safety.
“It weighs heavily on everybody in this industry. It weighs heavily on my friends over at Brightline,” Dech said. “It’s tragic for the train crews. It’s tragic for the passengers, it’s tragic for the people, the families, and we all want it to stop. But the one thing that’s constant is that the only thing that has any business being on these tracks are trains.”
Brightline has not been found at fault for any of the crashes or deaths. The National Transportation Safety Board is currently investigating Brightline‘s fatality rate — the highest in the nation — and will issue a report with safety recommendations, a spokeswoman told the Miami Herald.
It’s unclear how big of a role Brightline, which has been in a financial rut, will play in paying for upgrades that could make the line safer. The Miami Herald/WLRN reported in November that nearly $100 million in public funds has been allocated for Brightline safety initiatives.
Brightline representatives declined interview requests to explain how the state’s new safety rules might affect the luxury train. The company also didn’t respond to questions about its timeline to install fencing, crisis signs and other safety measures included in a $45 million grant program, $35 million of which is government money.
In a September deposition filed in a court case, Brightline’s vice president of operations, Michael Lefevre, said the company is “proud” of obtaining public funding for safety improvements. “It’s one of our goals,” he said.
In the deposition, Lefevre recounted instances where safety improvements were scaled back or delayed because the company relied on public funding and didn’t want to pay to install the enhancements itself.
When people started dying after Brightline launched, the company placed digital warning signs at intersections announcing the new, faster train, Lefevre said. The company has engaged in public education campaigns for years and has collaborated with law enforcement to catch drivers trying to illegally beat the train at crossings.
One time, after two deadly crashes at a Melbourne crossing, Brightline immediately installed bollards to make the crossing safer. But Lefevre said that’s not the norm.
In the deposition, he said the company does one federally mandated hazard analysis each year. Beyond that, the company doesn’t review the crash history of crossings where people or cars are struck to see whether more safety improvements are needed.
“We’re not required to,” Lefevre said, “and we do not.”
The lawyer who deposed Lefevre, Todd Baker — who represents the families of several people killed by Brightline trains — said state and local officials are hesitant to demand bold safety reforms. They see the train’s potential for “positive economic impact” in Florida.
“Spot improvements are a good start, and as someone who regularly sees the devastation caused by lack of improvements, something is better than nothing,” Baker told the Miami Herald.
“Are these minor spot improvements sufficient? Absolutely not,” he said. “They need to do a lot more if they’re serious about saving lives.”
Anyone who is experiencing suicidal thoughts should contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (988) or Crisis Text Line (text “HELLO” to 741741) for immediate support. Regular check-ins with primary care physicians and clergy members, who often have insights into community resources, can also be beneficial.
Killer Train Series Credits
WLRN
Danny Rivero | Reporter
Joshua Ceballos | Reporter
Jessica Bakeman | Editor
Sergio R. Bustos | Editor
Denise Royal | Editor
Merritt Jacob | Audio Engineer
Mihail Halatchev | Digital Production
Matheus Sanchez | Digital Editor
Alyssa Ramos | Digital Engagement
Valentina Sandoval | Digital Engagement
Miami Herald
Brittany Wallman | Investigative Reporter
Susan Merriam | Data & Visual Journalist
Shradha Dinesh | Data Journalist
David Newcomb | Director of Editorial Project Experiences
Matias J. Ocner | Photo Journalist
Aaron Leibowitz | Reporter
Allison Beck | Intern, Ida B. Wells Society
Carolina Zamora | Audience & Engagement
Kevin Scott | Audience & Engagement
Adrian Ruhi | Audience & Engagement
David Santiago | Photo Editor
John Parkhurst | Copy Editor
Jessica Lipscomb | City Editor
Trish Wilson Belli | Investigations Editor
The Fund for Investigative Journalism provided support for this series.
