The commuter rail system that Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County officials have for years been working to create remains in limbo after a judge on Thursday paused the lawsuit that had been standing in its way.
Florida East Coast Railway (FECR), the company that owns the railroad tracks Brightline trains run on, sued Brightline in August over an alleged breach of contract. FECR argues the private passenger train company violated its agreement with the railway by negotiating a commuter rail deal with the county governments without bringing FECR into the conversation.
Since FECR owns the tracks, it has a joint use agreement that lets Brightline run its trains on those tracks. FECR says Brightline should have included the company in its conversations with Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County, and that a commuter rail service is not feasible on the same railroad that FECR's freight trains run on.
"The commuter service that Defendants sold to the Counties is, as a practical matter, an unviable and unsafe pipe dream. Its dramatic expansion of the number of trains operating on the FEC Corridor would, in turn, require significant additions and upgrades to the Corridor’s infrastructure, such as new tracks, stations, and sidings, to operate safely and avoid collisions," FECR wrote in an amended complaint filed on Sept. 26 that was not previously reported on.
FECR's lawsuit is currently on a temporary hold as it and Brightline recently entered into arbitration.
Brightline argued that according to its contract with the railway company, any disputes arising out of the joint use agreement must be dealt with in arbitration before they go to a lawsuit. Brightline said FECR just tried to do damage to the company's reputation by filing suit before dealing with this privately.
"FECR sought to harm Brightline publicly by making gratuitous factual allegations it knew were both false and irrelevant to the declaratory relief it sought, and did so by pursuing these baseless claims which could only be pursued, if at all, in 'binding arbitration,'" Brightline wrote in a motion to stay the court proceedings.
On Thursday morning, Judge Robert Watson put a temporary stay on the lawsuit until the parties can meet again to discuss the ongoing arbitration. Brightline contends the lawsuit should be put on a more permanent hold until it and the railway can work things out privately. FECR is against this and wants to push the lawsuit forward, accusing Brightline of "deceit" and "mismanagement."
Amid this backdrop, county leaders like Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava believe the "Coastal Link" commuter project can still move forward.
"We've certainly spoken to FECR. They know that we're hoping and planning to have local stops on the Northeast corridor, and obviously Brightline is eager for us to have those stops as well, so we're very hopeful that they can resolve the issues so that we can have the access that we've planned for," Levine Cava told WLRN at a transit event last month. "We're of course an interested party, and we are contributing what we can to allow them to settle it in a way that will benefit the residents of Miami-Dade County."
Miami-Dade and the other two counties have sought millions of dollars in federal grants and spent more than five years pushing to get this commuter rail deal done to improve transit across the region. FECR has itself said in its court filings that this deal is essentially "dead in the water," but government officials and Brightline are forging ahead anyway.
READ MORE: Private train, public cash: How Brightline has been buoyed by taxpayer dollars
