MELBOURNE, Fla. — This weekend marks one year since Brightline began service to Orlando from South Florida, which has given those in Central Florida an alternative way to get to West Palm Beach and Miami.
But in Brevard County, where the train doesn’t stop, there have been times when it was deadly.
“I will always have questions and I’ll never have answers with this,” said Roger Batchelder.
Batchelder’s daughter, Lisa Batchelder, was killed along with another man, when she was driving her Chevy Avalanche across the tracks at WH Jackson Street in Melbourne in January.
“I’m surprised they haven’t cleaned up the debris, I still see it here,” said Batchelder. “And maybe it’s a warning to other people: ‘Take a look at what happened here.’”
Before beginning service from South Florida to Orlando, Brightline made upgrades to all 50 crossings in Brevard County, in the hopes that it would help increase safety for company's 32 daily runs.
But even with improvements, crashes have occurred.
Looking at data from the Federal Railroad Administration, which found from September 2023 to the end of June 2024 (the last month they have data from), 34 people were killed by Brightline trains along the entire route from Orlando to Miami. Based on the federal data, that would account for nearly 44% of all fatal train incidents in the state during that timeframe.
Of the 34 fatalities, 12 happened in Brevard County.
Since July, there’s been at least five more people killed in the state, including a man who Cocoa Police Department officials say likely intentionally walked onto the tracks.
None of the crashes have been blamed on Brightline — they have been attributed to either suicide or, as Batchelder suspects in his daughter’s case, an attempt to beat the train.
“The way she drove, I don’t OK that kind of driving,” he said.
Just two days before his daughter was killed, another driver at that same intersection and was killed while trying to cross.
After the crashes, delineators were installed to prevent drivers from going around the gate while the crossing arms are down.
“I would go with the four full gates. Remove the options to cross,” said Batchelder. “Four full gates, they can’t drive around it.”
Quad gates, which have four stop arms instead of two, have been installed at some of the busier crossings in Brevard County.
The city of Melbourne has plans to install a quad gate at the WH Jackson Street crossing. Officials say they are just waiting for federal grant money.
According to Brightline,since opening the Orlando station, 2.6 million rides have been taken, with riders traveling 5.4 million miles.
The company said that’s the equivalent of taking an estimated 1.9 million cars off the road.
While the rail company did not directly respond to Spectrum News' request about crashes on the tracks, they do have an on-going safety campaign that urges people to sign its safety pledge online.