Florida East Coast Railway Archives

Why is there an above-ground pipeline blocking traffic near the new FPL building?

FPL is paying to connect a water main under the railroad tracks and Alternate A1A without disrupting traffic through horizontal directional drilling.

Motorists using the Kyoto Gardens Drive shortcut between Military Trail and Alternate A1A got another lane closure — and quite a sight — the past few weeks.

A giant black pipeline, like an uncoiled snake, hovered above the road on steel-borne rollers for a fifth of a mile as crews in orange and green vests danced around it, positioning sections of pipe with buckets attached to shiny yellow Deere and Komatsu excavators.

Railroad quiet zones two years away in north county

Faster Brightline trains raise specter of more deaths even as quiet zones two years away.

Railroad quiet zones are coming to Palm Beach Gardens and north county.

But not until 2023, at the earliest. And not without some risk.

The sounds of silence won’t break out over north county any earlier than 2023, officials say, even though the $2.2 million needed to pay for more gates and other safety features at 26 crossings is in hand.

That’s because the final testing of safety measures can’t start until the Brightline passenger service completes construction on a second set of tracks, not just in Palm Beach County but all the way to Orlando. That $2.7 billion job is not scheduled to be done until the final months of 2022.