Tri-Rail’s turnaround: Outgoing leader talks cleaner stations, rising ridership
In 2022, after veteran railroader David Dech took his new job as executive director of the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, he and his wife elected to take a Tri-Rail train from the commuter line’s headquarters in Pompano Beach to the airport.
“It was July,” he recalled. “It was very warm in the [rail] car. There was a pungent odor in the car. You couldn’t see out the windows. The windows were all fogged up. There was a fellow in a hospital gown sitting on the end of the platform.”
These days, the outgoing executive told the South Florida Sun Sentinel, Tri-Rail is a rail line he’d “put up against any railroad in the country.”