While I've never ridden the Tri-Rail system here in South Florida...the recent reports of all the troubles have me thinking I won't be trying it out anytime soon.  The Tri-Rail system is one of South Florida's 'mass transit' train systems that travels a north-south route through Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties.  It kind of runs along I-95 and if you've ever traveled east-west on any of the surface streets, chances are..you've had to wait for the train to pass by.

I'm always amazed that people do use this service.  Some of the stops seem to be in very strange places...where you really can't easily catch a bus or taxi to get to your final destination.  It's also annoying driving a car since this train cuts right through the main parts of East Broward County.

It seems that the Tri-Rail is now operated by Bombardier Transportation.  They took over in July and are in charge of making sure the trains and passenger cars are in top working order.  Well, there have been record delays along with a record number of trains out of commission.  On August 16th, 13 of the 50 weekday trains were impacted.  Not so good when people rely on your service to get to work in many cases.

One thing that really troubles me is the reports from workers and passengers of the foul smell that is coming from the toilets on the trains.  Passengers won't even sit near them anymore and some workers have threatened to go to the hospital for exposure to noxious fumes.  There were even some reports of roach infestations on some of the trains.  Ick.  That's not all ether.  Some of the cars even have broken air conditioning systems.  Can you imagine paying for this service and not having A/C in Florida in the summer?!?  This isn't the PATH train or subway system in NYC. 

Hopefully with some of these problems being brought to light, they will move quickly to resolve them.  Until then...you might want to give the system a test run prior to using it full-time.