With the impending return of passenger trains to the FEC tracks, there's lots of excitement over where to put new stations, and how to redesign the areas around them to be walkable, transit-oriented, denser, and generally more awesome places. Pompano Beach, which is angling for a new Tri-Rail station in its historic downtown, has been master planning the whole area around the future station's likely location. The plan radiates from the station, reconnects the area's former street grid, puts the densest areas near the station itself, creates smaller neighborhoods within the larger scope that have varying characteristics, adds bike lanes, and creates a new network of public green spaces.
In a few significant ways, the plan reverts downtown Pompano Beach back to something like what it originally was when passenger trains originally ran on the FEC tracks. This pattern should continue, with urban centers all along the railroad line reorienting themselves back towards a set of tracks they've tried to ignore for the last 50+ years, even though those tracks are what created and defined South Florida's urban existence in the first place.
· Tri-Rail coverage [Curbed Miami]
· Redeveloping Downtown Pompano Beach [MetroAtlantic]
· New Downtown Pompano Beach Massing & Zoning Analysis [CRA]