>>This week on NewsNight a closer look at a range of road construction projects throughout Central Florida and what they might mean for the region's congestio hotspots.

Plus, officials study dat with a view to potentially expanding the hours of SunRai services.

NewsNight starts now.

[MUSIC] Hello, I'm Steve Mort welcome to NewsNight, where we take an in-depth look at the top stories and issues in Central Florida and how they shape our community.

Tonight we're checking back in on the transportation issue in Central Florida.

We'll start with roads.

Last weekend, the Florida Department of Transportation opene several new ramps connecting I-4 with what's known as a diverging diamond intersection at Daryl Carter Parkway.

That intersection opened earlier this year and is one of several major construction projects that are part of the I-4 Beyond the Ultimate program.

The Florida Departmen of Transportation says projects like this one are designed to ease congestion, particularly in heavily trafficked areas in Central Florida's tourist corridor.

Amid record visitor numbers last year, combined with the opening of Epic Universe, exits along I-4 are feeling the strain.

The road is one of the most congested in the nation, carrying hundreds of thousands of vehicles a day.

>>The Daryl Carter Parkway overpass is becoming a new interchange and the transformation is nearly complete.

>>The Beyond the Ultimate project build on the earlier $2.4 billion I-4 ultimate work in Orange and Seminole counties, which added more than 20 miles of express lanes and was one of the most expensive road infrastructure projects in Florida history.

That project finished late and overbudget.

Keen to speed up future work, lawmakers in the most recent legislative session agreed to allocate $1.7 billion for the current fiscal year to accelerate completion of express lanes extending into Osceola and Polk counties.

A scheme dubbed Moving I-4 Forward.

It's part of a broade initiative proposed by governor DeSantis in 202 called Moving Florida Forward.

A $4 billion investment in multiple roads, including Interstate 75, 95 and the I-4 work from State Road 436 past Champions Gate to U.S. 27, in Polk County.

>>We're going to continu working really hard to increase sound mobility reduce congestion, make sure Florida continu to lead the way.

It's importan for quality of life.

It's also important fo our continued economic vitality.

>>Governor DeSantis there.

Well, let's bring in our panel now to break it all down.

And joining us in the studio this week, Catherine Silver from WKMG News 6.

You cover events up there in Seminole County.

Good to see you here today.

>>Good to see you.

>>Thanks for being here.

Talia Blake, Morning Edition host at Central Florida Public Media.

Good to see you, Talia.

>>You too.

>>And Alexa Lorenzo, morning host, traffic expert at WFTV, Channel 9.

Good to see you, Alexa.

Let me start with you on this one, because this is really your wheelhouse.

And we'll talk more about those I-4 Beyond the Ultimate project.

Let's start with that Daryl Carter Parkway interchange that I just mentioned briefly there.

Just explain exactly what is new there.

>>So back in March, they opened the divergin diamond interchange, where they temporarily mov traffic from Daryl Carter onto the left then back onto the right, eliminating conflict points that was ready to go and open to drivers in March so they can get used to how that works.

It's supposed to allow twic the amount of vehicles through in the same amount of time and cut conflict points in half.

So it's been months sinc drivers were adjusting to that.

The new thing that opened on Saturday were the three new ramps at I-4 and Daryl Carter.

So it's one eastbound and one westbound I-4 off ramp to Daryl Carter.

That's the new exit 70, and it's an eastbound I-4 onramp.

From Daryl Carter.

So the ramps have now completed the majority of this project.

>>Well, so what about those, conflict points, then?

What does the state say the benefits of, a diverging diamond like this one will be for drivers?

>>Yeah, well, she kind of alluded it to it already.

You know, we're going to see less time at the red lights.

So, you know, kind of coming through that area quicker, more people in the same amount of time to try to like alleviate traffic in that area.

More people going through less time.

>>It's going to result-- >>It's going to result in that.

>>Fewer tailbacks.

Yeah.

I mean, this is just one of the the exits, right?

That is is being redone.

There's many up and down I-4, including in your patch in Seminole County.

>>Yeah, absolutely.

Always a story is there' construction all over Florida.

That's what everyone always complains about, right?

In Seminole in particular we've seen a lot of work this year happenin near Rinehart and 46A just off of I-4.

I personally drive through that stretch almost every single day, and it certainly backs up down that exit ramp off of I-4.

So they are working to increase the capacity there, add some turn lanes, modify the ones, and you've seen a lot of change within the last year.

>>Let's talk about the the approval of that 1.7 billion Moving Florida Forward dollars.

That's to speed up I think it's an already shortened time frame, right, the ten year time frame for completing improvements t our western stretch of I-4 out to Polk County.

Remind us what that phase involves and what the time frame is at this point.

>>So we're talking abou three projects under this money.

It's two express lanes, both directions.

It's a little over a two and a half mile stretch from east of World Drive to east of US-192.

So those express lanes are set to relieve some of the backups we see on the-- >>Extending the express lanes that we currently have out further.

>>Yes.

And it's also two express lanes for it's about a little over three miles east of 532 to west of World Drive, a very congested stretch we all know about.

And then the third is really for Osceola County in particular.

It's that, 3.1 mile stretc Poinciana connector, essentially linking State Road 429 to the southern portion of Osceola Polk Line Road, all in connection to I-4.

>>Yeah.

As you know, I was skeptical about the toll roads when they first began, but I've sort of come around somewhat as I zip by the, the the traffic that's stood still.

There are other big improvements in Moving Florida Forward, in fact, around the state, including some in our area, I think one of them in Ocala?

>>Yeah, we're, they're looking to make improvements to I-75 around State Road 326 kind of going to the north.

There's also Project State Road 44 in, Sumter County.

We're looking at roughl about 30 miles, adding an additional auxiliar lane in there.

So that way we can, you know, kind of just alleviate traffic, reduce congestion.

As we know, people are moving to Florida every single day, which means more cars on the road every single day.

So the more lanes that we can have to reduce that traffic, the better.

>>Well, as Talia says, we are growing a lot.

The Central Florida Expressway Authority is also, considering significant projects, including some, right, that have been in the works for quite a long time.

>>Yes, particularly the proposed toll road that would connect to the 417 to Sanford's airport.

They've been talking about what that could look like for nearly two decades now.

They're finally getting closer to that preferred route.

They've wound it down.

They just had some publi hearings within this last month.

They're looking forward to what the board will ultimately decide in October.

Hopefully it'll alleviate a lot of traffic on Lake Mary Boulevard if they give their go ahead.

>>Well, Talia said the more lanes, the better.

But I wonder if that is actually the case, right.

Because, all this road building I guess is aime at reducing congestion.

Right.

But there is some disagreement amongst urban planners amongst people who build roads.

There's something called induced demand, right?

Where the new roads in fact actually create traffic rather than than helping it help ease it.

Just explain that a little bit.

>>We've all heard the phras if you build it, they will come.

Right.

So it kind of works for roads to the more lanes you open, the more traffic mos people think we can anticipate.

So the thought process here and some of these analyzes date back to 1970s, that we're looking at.

There was a study that showed a 10% increase in lane miles, added to a 10% increase in traffic.

And essentially the critics of these expansion products say we'll see the benefi for a few months, maybe a year.

But once people get used to it and it's the norm, we'r just going to see more traffic.

So that's the push back there.

There's a highway in Houston that saw longer commute after a big expansion project.

So it's something that we hope I don't know what this material is, that we don't see-- >>I don't think it's wood.

Yeah.

>>We don't see here.

>>Yeah.

Well certainly, Florida's traffic planners certainly seem to believe it'll it'll help.

So we'll we'll see-- >>And it has a little bit in that, Polk County World Drive, Osceola stretch.

>>Yeah.

>>They expanded there and it's helped for a few months so far, so.

>>Well we'll see how it goe over over the years.

Definitely.

We've put links to the, road construction umbrella projects that I just mentioned on our website.

They have much more detai on the ongoing and planned work.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

Next tonight we'll turn to train, starting with Brightline, a year long investigation by the Miami Herald and our public media partners WLRN involving painstaking data gathering finds more than 180 people have been kille by Brightline trains since 2017, an average of one fatality every 13 days.

The report points out that the company has not been found at fault for any of the deaths on its tracks, but it claims Brightline has failed to urgently address the dangers.

I spoke earlier this week with WLRN's Daniel Rivera, one of the journalist involved in the investigation.

>>What we did is we went to every medical examiner's office in all the counties that Brightline runs in.

We requested all the deaths by, by train in all those areas, and then we had to whittle those down to specifically Brightline incidents, because there are many other incidents that that happen.

So we have to do that.

Then we requested autopsy reports for for for many of those.

Then we got police reports and then we made phone calls.

We talked to loved ones.

We did a lot of other, you know, doorknocking and that kind of reporting just to square things ou a bit and all things included, we came up with a number of 182 from when our story first published, of the the number of people that were hit that have been struc and killed by Brightline trains, it was far large than had been reported before.

And a lot of that is because no every death has made the media.

So there is organization and reporters that have been tracking it but it's only by media reports.

Well, sometimes things happen in an odd hour, you know, is a person on foot.

It wasn't a vehicle so the train didn' have to stop for so long, etc..

So not everything got reported.

But with this reporting we feel really very strong.

We have the best look on the actual fatalities that have been reported so far, and the company did not dispute our findings on that.

>>What are the key reasons why we're seeing so many fatalities and injuries as well on top of that?

>>One of them is is Brightline and Florida East Coast Railway, which owns the actual physical tracks.

For year they resisted putting up fences or creating physical barriers that would stop people from just walking on to the tracks.

And I should underscore, the vast majority of deaths that we found were not people driving.

There were actually people on foot often crossing in between neighborhoods, not at crossings.

That's in large part that happens because there it's so easy to access the tracks.

So the so both companies resisted, putting up fencing or other kind of barriers.

It does cost a lot of money.

They're more warm to doing that now.

There was a report from the Federal Rail Railroad Administration from 2014 where federal investigators looked at this stretch of railroad, and they said they raised some real serious red flags about the route that it would take throug densely populated neighborhoods.

And they flagged it for state officials and for the company themselves and for local government, saying some of these crossings are not going to be safe when we're running 3 passenger trains per day at 70 miles 79 miles an hour through them, they recommended that they would close.

None of those crossings have been closed.

Another one is local governments did not want to subject residents to the train horns blowing.

The train horns exists to war people about for safety reasons.

So we have u and down the corridor, the vast majority of it, where trains d not have to sound their horns.

And we know that when that happens, there are more incidents and more deaths.

So we have many layers of things that did not happen for one reason or the other.

And they all contributed to this extremely high death toll.

>>Well, let's talk about the response to to your reporting here.

You mentioned before that the Brightline has not pushed back on any of the actual data, but writ large.

What is their response to your reporting, been?

>>The company's, response overall, is that the primary responsibility for all of this is on the individuals.

It's on the people who cross the tracks on foot where they should not be crossing.

On driver that in some cases, we've seen and we reported on in our story, drove around the barriers that did exist.

And they're being reckless.

So the company's stance is the company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on safety improvements.

And this ultimately is every case of death or injury is, avoidable.

>>Daniel Rivera, they're from WLRN public media in Miami.

Alexa I'll start with you on this one because you've covered Brightline extensively.

How does the company respond when when asked about that sort of America's deadliest railway moniker.

>>They put the blame anywhere but them really, the trai has never gone off the tracks.

It hasn't been a mechanical error.

And yes, we are talking about people's lives and decisions that were made but they have always, remained steadfast in the belief tha they are just operating railway.

And it's not a conductor issue.

And engineering issue that it's human error, trespassing.

So they have been pretty adamant about that.

>>And of course, they are running through a highly densely populated area, particularly on the southern stretch.

>>And that's where the criticism comes in from.

It is a highly populated area, and people do have access to cross somewhat freely.

They're trespassing, but free will they they cross.

And that's where we see these tragedies happen.

So that has been the pushback.

We need more grade crossings.

We need more infrastructure, more enforcement to keep people from crossing.

>>I mean, of course, there has been years long funding delays, from from the federal government for, for crossing improvement.

Daniel Rivera, in fact, told me that the Trump administration has just signed of on a large grant, for fencing.

So we'll see how that goes.

You've covered some of the work that's been done already in Brevard County.

Tell us about that.

>>I talked to the Space Coast Transportation Planning Organization about some of the grants that they've received for work in the area, and it's essentially to put quad gates where we have ha some of these awful tragedies.

And that's where cars drive through trying to get through the intersection and they get hit.

So with that quad gate, there's no ability to get through that crossing.

When that quad gate is in place.

>>That, Miami Herald WLRN reporting accuses Brightline of blaming the victims, but it does seem, I mean the Florida Rail Safety Coalition.

I think that was established last year.

Seems to agree, right, that that that, highway users frequently are at fault.

>>Yeah.

They do.

They actually did a study over, like a nine, ten year period between 2013 and 2022 that found that majority of people or majority of accidents that happen are because of behaviors by people, preventable behaviors that they call it.

So I think they said about 88% of the incidents were because peopl were stopping on the crossing, or they were not stopping or they were stopping than going or they were just going through the gates, thing that they could have prevented and not done to not be in that incident.

So the coalition does agree that these are things that people can stop to, you know, stop, you know, what's happening.

>>Yeah.

Worth mentioning as well that the data compiled in that reporting also finds that SunRail is one of the top ten, deadlies railways in the country as well.

Meanwhile, Catherine, there are plans, to continue with that, eventual Brightline extension down to Tampa, via the shared sunshine corridor with, with, SunRail.

There were some moves last week on on funding for that extension.

What do we know?

>>Right.

Brightline wants to secure about $400 million in bonds to develop and design that sunshine corridor connector from Tampa to Orlando.

We saw a hearing last week where they opened it up to public comment.

This is all part of that process to secure that money hopefully.

>>I wanted to touch on a couple of other things.

Before we move on, let's talk about SunRail a second.

There are some renewed discussions about ways to possibly expand service times, late hours and at the weekend.

I know people tell me frequently that they wish the trains ran at different times.

What do we know about the likely demand and whether that's going to be viable?

>>So this goes back to 2016, 2017.

These early discussions of weekend service.

Back then, they did some sort of a study finding that weekend ridership would range between 2,000 and 3,500 riders with when there are big events, concerts, etc., stuff like that across Central Florida, they'll see spike.

So that was, let's call it, nearly ten years ago now.

Back in March, they did almost like a test with a free Saturday event, trying to get people to come in to downtown Orlando, and it was well above the weekly average ridership.

They saw about 11,000 riders hopping on.

>>So that gives them some good data.

>>It gives them good data but it's the cost of operating that for that kind of test run.

Bring people to downtown Orlando for the Communit Redevelopment Agency, the CRA.

It cost them $32,000 to sponsor that.

>>That's a lot.

>>So it's a lot of money fo are we going to see the demand?

>>Yeah.

So there may be demand, but whether it pays for itself is another question I wanted to wrap up by mentioning busses.

Seminole County is actually looking to cut, Lynx bus routes.

I wonder if it has an alternative for those who need it, Catherine.

>>They are working on that right now because there's been so much talk about reducing most of the Lynx routes in Seminole County next year, they're only keeping about 11 fixed bus routes.

And moving forward, they've contracted with Freebee to develop a new micro transit service.

It's basically going to be a rideshare.

Just this week, the Board of Commissioners actuall gave their approval on the name.

So it's going to be called Scout.

Okay.

The idea is Seminole County while you're out and about.

And essentially it'll take you door to door like a rideshare would, rather than relying on a fixed route that a bus has to operate along.

>>In terms of the Lynx cut.

So they concerned about demand?

>>That was why they wanted to reduce those routes.

They they, the commissioners had joked before the amount of money they were spending, the millions on Lynx and the small number of people who were using it.

They said we might as well pay for an Uber for everyone.

So they wanted to think abou what other option could we have for people that they might actually use and it would serve them better.

And so they're hopin that this is the answer to that.

>>The efficiency of bus travel, has long been a complaint o commuters that rely on busses.

And you guys did a whole series about that.

>>We we did because it has been a huge issue.

And as we were talking about earlier, as more people come here and congestion gets worse and the roads get busier, more people are might b looking to public transportation or just might not have the means to have their own car.

We talked with someone.

My colleague talked with someone who had to get up three hours before her shift just to get to the nearest Lynx stop in Osceola County near her house.

So it's a huge problem, and it's something that even Metro planner Orlando did a survey on last year and found that a lot of people have problem with the inconvenient times of the bus, you know, where bus stops are located, the fact that there's not enough coverings for rain or sunshine at the bus stop.

So there's been a lot of issues with bussing in Central Florida.

>>Al things that our urban planners are dealing with here in Central Florida.

You can find a link to the Miam Herald and WLRN series Killer Train on our websit wucf.org/newsnight.

Meanwhile, be sure to find u on social media.

We're at WUC TV, on Facebook and Instagram.

You'll also find us on X @NewsNightWUCF.

>>Okay, finally, tonight, another important part of the story of growth in Central Florida.

The Orange County Commission last week said it would not repeal its rural boundary charte amendment approved by voters.

The county has faced pressur to make changes to the boundary, as well as its vision 2050 growth Pla and an ordinance on development in the Lake Pickett area.

It's all because governor DeSantis signed SB 180 earlie this year, which retroactively limits local governments abilities to impose certain restrictions on construction.

Supporters say it's designed to help communities with recovery after Hurricanes Debbie, Helene and Milton.

Critics claim it's a backdoor way to allow unfettered development.

The commission recently held a hearing on the issue with public input.

>>We didn' vote for Senate Bill 180.

We voted for local control, for balance, for a futur that belongs to us.

>>Please do not give i to state overreach.

Defend our righ to plan our county's growth based on our needs not developer's bottom lines.

>>We have to stand u to bullies.

This is nothing but, someone trying to control what we do at the local leve when we have our own system of governanc that we have worked so hard for.

>>We're moving forward.

And the preemption in that i going on in Tallahassee is real.

We are not alon in being unified as counties across the state in trying to stop it.

We don't just work to stop it here.

We work to stop it in Tallahassee.

And we need our legislators on both sides of the aisle to support that.

>>Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, at that recent commission hearing.

Alexa, WFTV has been covering this story.

Developers are pressuring Orange County to allow developments in the rural boundary based on passage of that that bill.

At the moment, though, it seems like the way forward is pretty murky.

>>At this point they just don't know if the State Department is going to act on this.

And will we see legal challenges hold up because at this point commissioners believe it's an overreach and potentially violating the state constitution.

We did hear Commissione Semrad say we got to stand up, we got a fight.

We got to challenge this so kind of now we're in a bit of a holding period.

If they come down and enforc this and say we have to change, then we're going to se a different path forward here.

>>It did seem from that hearin that the public opinion of this seems pretty clear.

>>Right.

And it resulted in a unanimous vote from commissioners to take no action.

It was very, very, moving to see the amount of people that were on the same side.

Usually you don't get that at these commission meetings.

>>You guys covered at that hearing last week as well.

What what did you hear?

What kind of feedback were you getting from the public?

>>Yeah.

I mean you kind of saw a glimpse of it at the beginning of that package.

I mean, people want the count to push back, but specifically one person said, Orange County is not for sale like this.

They're very prou of their county.

They don't want, the commissioners to kind o just give in to this legal threat i kind of how they're seeing it.

So they want the county to push back.

>>Seminole County's had a very long standing rural boundar right back dating back to 1991.

I think part of it abuts the eastern part of Orange County's rural boundary.

What have you been hearing in Seminole about the future of its rural boundary?

>>Well, it's certainly a priority for both the commission and the public.

We've heard at that time and time again that they want to protect this, particularly when there was so much talk about legislation that could make their boundary useless.

Commissioners came out right and said, we really nee to keep that local control here, because ultimately it's their districts that have to deal with the symptoms of growth.

When things start popping up and all of a sudden we're stuck with the traffic in the utilities and everything that comes with that.

>>I mean, in Seminole County the voters there also approved charter amendments, on development at the last election, like like we did in Orange County.

Is there any concern that they might run afoul of the state law?

>>Well, I think for for now, people are just showing up to back those referendum as they did at the election because they wan they understand that the supermajority matters And that's really what it did.

It strengthened it so that it would make it difficult for them to remove pieces of that rural boundary and carve it out.

So I think they know that they have the public support moving forward.

And the Commission has wanted to very closely watch what happens in that eastern part of the county.

So they're they're holding fast at this.

>>I mean, Mayor Demings did raise the question there about the broader question about preemption.

And we hav and you and I have talked over over the years about efforts in Tallahassee.

That does seem to be a desire by many lawmakers to preempt a lot of the local powers that local governments have.

>>And we've seen pretty quickly some of our leaders fight back, and especially if you're on different sides of the aisle they're not biting their tongue.

>>What about in in Seminole County?

Do we see concerns there as well about the potential for state preemption?

>>They definitely talked about it before.

And they have, you know, contacts in Tallahassee that they will speak to directly.

If there is a concern, especially though they'll go straight to them and say, here's what we're dealing with.

They'll talk to the people they know and hopefully be able to advocate for what's best or what they think is best for Seminole moving forward.

>>And Mayor Demings telling the public that the there you need to be taking your arguments to Tallahasse that the arguments are not here in this chamber.

You can find a link to SB 180 on our website to read for yourself.

It's all at wucf.org/newsnight.

But that is all the time we have for this week.

My thanks to Catherine Silver from WKMG News 6.

Thanks for coming in Catherine.

>>Thank you.

>>Appreciate it.

>>Talia Blake from Central Florida Public Media good to see today Talia thanks for coming in.

And Alexa Lorenzo from WFTV Channel 9.

Thank you so much for coming in guys.

Really appreciate it.

We'll see you next Friday night at 8:30 here on WUCF.

In the meantime, from all of us here at NewsNight, take care and have a great week.