The air/ground transportation interface...

My friend arrived from Texas this past Friday night.  One night in December, he was checking out flights and fares on the Internet and discovered that Spirit Air had a $40 round trip fare from Dallas to Ft. Lauderdale.  He immediately snatched it up, called me and gave me the date that he was arriving.  This was a spur of the moment decision for him, and me, but I delightfully looked forward for the opportunity to visit with him in person.  His plane was scheduled to arrive around 8:30 p.m.  The planner side of me got to thinking that he might be able to take advantage of our Tri-Rail commuter railroad with a shuttle from the Ft. Lauderdale airport to the nearby Tri-Rail station, and then on to the Lake Worth station where I could pick him up.  Looking at the schedule (it takes some study), it appeared that he would be here with time to spare before the last train leaves the station at 10:18 p.m.  That would put him in Lake Worth around 11 p.m.  We both thought that was workable and planned accordingly.

Friday came and he made the plane in Dallas.  I monitored the progress on a flight tracker found on the web.  It increasingly became apparent that he would be late, as the plane was shown as still being on the ground.  It turned out to be about an hour's delay due to what I later found out was the inability of the front cabin phone to communicate with the rear cabin phone.  I knew that the hour's delay would probably result in a "photo finish" - even if everything clicked and my friend found his way and navigated the the ticket process.

He called me once he landed, while still on the plane.  It was just after 9:30 p.m. and I told him that I thought he could make it as he had 45 minutes until the last train left.  He said the plane was taking time to unload.  According to the schedule, the last shuttle left at 10:08 p.m., which leaves 10 minutes for the shuttle to get from the terminal to terminal.  He ended up making the shuttle, but in the shadow of the Tri-Rail station, he got to witness the last train leaving the station while still on the shuttle.  The driver took him back to the terminal so that he could rent a car for a day and we would return it the following day.  I was disappointed in my practical planning experiment and sorry that instead of maybe a $5 to Lake Worth, it was going to be more than 10 times that for a rental car for a day.

So he got up here o.k. and the next day, in the mid-afternoon, we headed to Ft. Lauderdale to return the car.  He rented from E-Z Rental which has no branch in West Palm Beach.

After the hour's drive, we winded through the serpentine access ways of the Ft. Lauderdale airport in search of the rental car return area, which we finally found (near Terminal 1 of 4.)  Once that was taken care of, we had to go the opposite way of the usual sign and pedestrian traffic flow to find the shuttle pick-up and drop off point.  After two or three false starts, we found the Tri-Rail Shuttle stop for Terminal 1 and waited there about 20 minutes until the 5:20 p.m. shuttle arrived.  Here are some pictures I took during the process:

This is the sign that you need to look for indicating the Tri-Rail shuttle stop.  It is not very obvious.

This is the bus - sorry, not the full view - it is one of the short shuttle buses, sort of like the rental car companies use.  There is no fare to ride from the airport to the Tri-Rail terminal.

This is a picture of my friend from inside the bus.  He is not as despondent in real-life as he looks in this picture.

This is at the station.  I took a picture of the bike locker facilities located outside the station.  These are for people to lock and store their bikes that they ride to the station and who do not need them at the other end of their trip.

In order to use the bike lockers, you need to register for them ahead of time by calling an 800 number or going to the SFRTA/Tri-Rail website.

This is a view of the Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood Airport Tri-Rail station.  We had to wait about 45 minutes for the northbound train - the second last of the day on weekends.  The last train leaves there at 9:03 p.m.  Notably, weekend fares are a flat $5 - period.  This means no matter how far you go or how many times you get off and on the train in any direction, you only pay once!  So, you can leave West Palm Beach early Saturday morning, go to Miami and return the same day for $5 - period.  The only regret yesterday is that I could have brought my Kindle to read during the wait, but the wait also gave us more time to visit.

Once on the train, at the front of each car, there is space for bikes.  This seems limited and I am no sure about the security, but it would be possible to ride to a station, board with your bike and have use of it at the other end.  Might be part of a nice weekend jaunt.

The train was FULL - we ended up on the second level.  It took about 45 minutes from the Ft. Lauderdale airport station to the Lake Worth station.  I thought ahead and called a cab company from the train once we left Delray.  They told me not to bother that there were plenty of cabs that would be waiting for passengers de-training at the station and that we would have our pick.  When we got off at the Lake Worth station, we were confronted with a bit of a Moroccan market of cab drivers all vying for our hire.  The first cab we got into had too low a battery to start, so we ended up exiting that one, which I thought could have provoked a fight between taxi drivers.  That didn't happen, but it seemed like a possibility.  The cab fare from the station to my house in College Park was $15 with tip - which was three times the cost of the weekend Tri-Rail fare.