I don’t know about other companies, but Enterprise has an office less than two and a half miles from the station. Granted, it is open only 8-6 M-F and 9-noon on Saturdays.
Thanks for the thought, but the Meteor is scheduled to arrive HOL @ 6:18 and MIA @ 6:55. The TriRail connection works but adds another hour or more to the end of a 30+ hour trip. The opening of the MCS will cut that transfer time out. I wonder why the radio silence from FLDoT?!?
Be careful, you may get what you wish. Airport car rentals usually have a surcharge that doesn’t apply at offsite facilities.
And sometimes municipalities apply car rental surcharges at train stations. It’s been ages since I’ve rented a car at Philadelphia 30th St, but I have a vague memory that I had to pay a surcharge there that I wouldn’t have had to pay at 19th and Market, and didn’t find out till it was too late to cancel and rebook the rental and still get a favorable base rate.
Tri-Rail is now expected to open at the new Miami Central Station in late March or April. No word on when Amtrak will move to MCS. The latest delay is not on Amtrak, but due to contractual problems with insurance and transferring the property to the Miami-Dade Expressway Authority. Which is something that should have been taken care of while the MCS was being built, IMO. See the Sun-Sentinel article: Tri-Rail’s Miami Airport station won’t open until spring
You’re dealing with the government here. No one knows anything and if they do then they won’t say for fear that they will be demoted (nobody is ever fired in government no matter how incompetent) to a job that they don’t want. It is only going to get worse. If you want easy rental car accessibility then fly, otherwise take a cab. Last time I took a cab to the rental center from Hialeah station it cost less than $20. Less than the cost of one dinner. You don’t want to be walking around that neighborhood in Hialeah at night (or the daytime for that matter) or trying to figure out the busses either. When I returned the car I had the shuttle van take me directly to the airport and he stopped at the last cab in line, I hopped in and we were at the station in a few minutes. There are not always cabs at the rental center and they have to be called. You’ll have to pay an airport surcharge but it is less stressful then waiting for a cab hoping you will get to the station in time for an early morning departure. Have a good trip.
I think rather than a generic “it’s the government”, it’s the whoever has jurisdiction over closing NW 25th St, Florida DoT and Amtrak.
Be that as it may, I don’t really care about who’s at fault.
I just want to know when Amtrak will discharge and accept Silver Service passengers at the super convenient MCS.
Our strategy for the last 2 years has been to get off in Hollywood and take TriRail for the 4 stops to MCS, pick up a car and get outa Dodge Miami.
TriRail connections are frequent (hourly through the evening) and take about 40 minutes to get to MCS.
Assuming Amtrak running on time, it’s Hialeah at 6:39 then say about a 20 minute cab ride geting us to MCS at around 7:00.
Amtrak’s Hollywood stop is at 5:59.
Connecting to a 6:11 TriRail gets us to MCS at 6:50.
Not a meaningful difference, except Hollywood is MUCH nicer than industrial park Hialeah.
Bottom line:
You’re right.
It seems like nobody really knows when Amtrak will use MCS and if they do, they ain’t tellin’.
Getting off at the downtown Milwaukee station and taking a cab back to the Milwaukee airport is also about $20 and probably takes the same amount of time as going through the Milwaukee airport station and waiting / getting on the shuttle bus.
However, folks will depart the train at the airport station every single time to save that $20 and because they never tried the alternative.
maybe we better wait until Irma get thru MIAMI . Then we might know tomorrow , next year or never dempending on what gets damaged ?. Might wonder about Brightline as well ?
Their stations should fare really well given the building codes in and around Miami now and that they are concrete and most are sheltered via surrounding buildings. The high rise apartments they are building probably a different story.