U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy announced that the Department has obligated four grants totaling over $42 million to fund critical rail safety projects along Brightline Florida’s rail corridor. 

The four rail safety grants support installing safety fencing, grade crossing upgrades, and a trespassing alert system. 

Brightline Grants and More

Under Secretary Duffy’s direction, the US Department of Transportation is working diligently to accelerate the distribution of the funds and address core infrastructure projects. 

Brightline’s Florida rail corridor has numerous exposure points to pedestrian and vehicle traffic along its tracks, which have contributed to a higher rate of collisions. 

Details on the grants, size, and project intentions include:

• A grant for $24,934,138 was announced in August 2022 to the Florida Department of Transportation for improvements to 330 highway-railroad crossings, along 195 miles of corridor, including fencing, crossing delineators, crisis support signage, and other intrusion prevention mitigations.

• A grant for $1,648,000 was announced in September 2023 for a Trespassing Identification and Classification System under the CRISI Grant Program for FY22. The project will advance a technology that provides real-time alerts and aggregates data to generate heat maps of trespassing and potential collision events on the Florida East Coast Railway right-of-way from Miami to Cocoa.

• A grant for $15,440,000 was announced in June 2023 to increase safety at 21 grade crossings along the Brightline/Florida East Coast Railway corridor with additional crossing gates and delineators.

• A grant for up to $150,000 was announced in October 2024 for the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office to support overtime costs for targeted enforcement of pedestrian trespassing at identified hot spots.