The Palm Beach Post: Letters: All Aboard’s focus since outset: freight

Excuse me for not taking Mike Reininger and James Hertwig at their word (“All Aboard Florida, FEC helping the state grow,” March 11). AAF has been all about freight from the first news of the expansions of the Panama Canal and PortMiami.

If tourist traffic was AAF’s target, the train stations would evoke Old Florida — like Bonnet House in Fort Lauderdale, maybe, or The Breakers in Palm Beach — rather than container cranes in an industrial shipping operation.

AAF’s target clientele is Panamax port traffic. A local TV station showed AAF’s ultimate routes: Jacksonville to the north, Tampa to the west. Taking passengers to Orlando via Port Canaveral (also a Panamax port) is a convenient subterfuge.

Had Orlando been the target destination — and tourists AAF’s target clientele — planners would have followed experts’ findings and built parallel to U.S. 27, through pristine and beautiful expanses of ranch land and glades.

Instead, coastal communities will suffer as an overloaded railroad deteriorates in the middle of their businesses, schools and daily lives.

No, AAF’s goal is to “grow” Florida into a polluted industrial wasteland, conveniently out of snow zones.

Z.M. CAEL, DELRAY BEACH