WORTH ANOTHER LOOK:“Things ‘pushed through to the other side’.” Question is, “Where are we now?”

“Florida’s first television station”

The image below is from Palm Beaches Remembered.

From Wikipedia: “The station first signed on the air on March 21, 1949 at 12:00 p.m. WTVJ was the first television station to sign on in the state of Florida, and the 16th station in the United States.”

Note the three words in the image above:

STOP
LOOK
LISTEN

In today’s Palm Beach Post is a highly interesting article by reporters Lulu Ramadan and Jennifer Sorentrue about news that will never go away in Florida: trains vs. people and motor vehicles. Here’s the opening paragraph:

Cities and towns along Brightline’s route will decide this spring whether to follow through with a plan to silence the company’s train horns — a choice some leaders say could force them to put public safety above quality of life following recent deaths along the railroad tracks.

In the never-ending debate about the role of trains in Florida the press and news media has always been in the center of the fray, which is both good and bad. On the one hand the media gets job security — they’ll never run out of news to report — both good news and bad news. But on the other hand train companies rely on the press and media to get it’s most important message out to the public as well.

THINK TRAIN!

Man vs. Train

Car vs. Train

It’s no contest.

From the Association of American Railroads: “What’s at Stake. Trespassing on rail and transit tracks or violating rail crossing laws is a
losing proposition.”

So what’s all this about, “Things have now ‘pushed through to the other side’.”?

There’s this saying in public relations about what happens when, for example, the press and news media doesn’t see that things have “pushed through to the other side”. What happens is one day an editor or editors will wake up and realize the public has abandoned them. The press and news media is on one side. The public is on the other.

It wasn’t hard to predict what would occur following all of the decidedly negative and skewed news reports about Brightline vis-à-vis the terrible news when people did not, tragically, heed the warnings a train was approaching. One reporter said the train was “barreling” down the tracks. Others used even more inflammatory adjectives and “loaded language” as well.

Now comes this from last Wednesday’s Palm Beach Post on the editorial page, “Letters: Brightline accidents tragic, but is railway really to blame?” Prior to the Post publishing all those letters on the editorial page was a blog post from three days prior even to that titled, “From editor at The Palm Beach Post: ‘Paranoia about All Aboard Florida train service misplaced’.”

Remember:
See Tracks, Think Train — All The Time Is Train Time.

In May 2014 the editor at the Post saw the future. And now that the future has arrived it may be good to remind the editor about what appeared on the editorial page almost 4 years ago now:

If the company’s business model sounds odd, it’s for good reason: There is virtually no precedent for it in the modern-day United States.
     Passenger train services have been money-losers in the U.S. for more than half a century. Most railroad companies dropped passenger service in the early 1970s, after the federal government eased requirements that they carry them and established the publicly funded Amtrak instead. Today, not a single private passenger-rail service still operates. [emphasis added]

and. . .

     Despite growing opposition in northern Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast, there is little that can be done to prevent the company from running passenger trains along its own tracks if it wishes to. And in fact, there is no good reason to oppose it.
     If All Aboard is successful, it will be a boon to South Florida – a mass-transit alternative in an urbanizing region, established at no direct cost to the public. The plan’s novelty calls for skepticism. It does not call for paranoia.

To read the entire editorial published in
May 2014 click on this link.

Note that for several weeks prior to the most recent letters, the ones that made it to the editorial page were mostly negative about Brightline, all of them to one degree or another, “laced with not too subtle fear-mongering.” The most recent negative letter was the most absurd of all. The letter writer wrote, “the expectation of accident-free train service is not realistic.”

The letter was absurd because the writer was not referring to the public’s responsibility. The writer was referring to Brightline’s responsibility to somehow provide ‘accident-free’ transportation.

The officials at Brightline never promised ‘accident-free train service’. However, Brightline expects the public to follow the law vis-à-vis crossing the railroad tracks:

Remember: See Tracks, Think Train — All
The Time Is Train Time.

Then back on Sunday, Jan. 21st posted this message on this blog:

If this issue is of high concern for you, then please write your own letter to the editor at the Post. It only takes 5–10 minutes. To learn how, including tips on how to “follow-up” and explain why your letter is important, click on this link.

Did the message above spur all those letters to the editor this week? It would be nice to believe this blog has that much influence, but the answer is “No”. What happened is something much more powerful than this blog or any blog: the press and news media pushed too far and then the public responded by pushing back. Now we’re somewhere in the middle again, a sort of balance. For now.

So. If you’ve made it this far. . .

One can see how important it is to have the public involved and fully engaged as well. The press, news media, train companies, and the public should all be focused on saving lives and getting the word out about public safety and trains just like WTVJ did almost 70 years ago. The only difference now is the trains are faster. In the future they’ll be even faster. And everyone needs to focus on this age-old adage:

STOP
LOOK
LISTEN