# Brightline Ridership Number-Crunching and Analysis



## Anderson

I've decided to make a separate thread to host my blathering about Brightline's ridership statistics (such as I can generate them) and _not_ overwhelm the main thread. Some notes to start:

Each Brightline train, at present, contains the followjng
Car 1: 48 Select seats, 1 wheelchair slot
Car 2: 32 Smart seats, 32 SmartPlus seats, 2 wheelchair slots
Car 3: 64 Smart seats, 2 wheelchair slots
Car 4: 56 Smart seats, 2 wheelchair slots

Totals:
-152 Smart seats
-32 SmartPlus seats
-48 Select seats
-7 wheelchair slots
--Overall total: 239 seats and slots (232 for purposes of my analysis)

Unless or until I can get someone to help me mount a program on a test harness to run checks, I have to basically use a clicker on the Brightline website and go through each day's trains to get a sense of ridership. With about 14-16 trains per day, this represents 84-96 separate checks I have to make for a full day of trains. A single run-through therefore takes about an hour, especially since on a packed train I may need to count Smart 2-3 times to be comfortable with the count. This means that I am not going to turn around and bother with the wheelchair spaces (I am ignoring them for my purposes). It also means that, in the vast majority of cases, I am only going to check Palm Beach-Miami or vice-versa, since checking to/from Fort Lauderdale would triple the workload. In some cases I may try to make a note of extra sales on a train between the Miami/Palm Beach departure and the sales cutoff for Fort Lauderdale. For example, on one train yesterday morning (the southbound 0700) I noted that an additional twelve seats were sold FLL-MIA _after_ the train left West Palm.

Some things I have observed, on what is thus far a sample size of one day imperfectly observed:
-Somewhere around 30% of tickets yesterday were "walk-up" sales, being sold in the 60-90 minutes before a train departs. This tends to be a little bit lower for peak trains (e.g. peak hours in the main direction of flow) but higher for off-peak trains. Day-of sales tend to be higher for trains later in the day as well (no shock there), in at least one case exceeding 50%.

-Load factors yesterday were reasonably healthy at rush hour. Outside of rush hour...not so much. Rush hour trains seem to have load factors in the 45-70% range in the peak direction, just under 20% in the reverse-peak direction, and often 5-10% in the off hours. I observed some even lower numbers, but per the walkup ticket situation they likely came in a bit higher than I saw. Overall load factor was probably about 13-15% (I technically observed 11.4% northbound and 13.5% southbound [1], but as noted above I also probably missed out on about 100 ticket sales from my count within the methodology I was following.

--I may well have missed out on another 50-100 due to my methodology not being able to fully pick up either last-minute sales out of Fort Lauderdale or any cases where a seat is sold both Miami-Fort Lauderdale and Fort Lauderdale-Palm Beach (or vice-versa). The former is likely to show up in a lot of cases; the latter is probably only a notable concern at rush hour (particularly heading south, since I presume that Fort Lauderdale is a net-pickup station SB and a net-discharge station NB).

-There are some cases where large blocks of seats sell out together, quite often in Car 4. I do not know if that is because of group sales, automatic sales in the system, or if there are "phantom sales" showing up.

[1] The southbound 0530 train did not run yesterday.

Edit: Explanation of charts:
-Each line is a departure from one of the origin stations (West Palm for southbound, Miami for northbound).
-I've used "F" to indicate Select, "W" to indicate SmartPlus, and "Y" to indicate Smart. This is based on airline coding practices (since being able to use a single letter makes the chart cleaner).

As further explanation, I will generally confine the data on a given day to a single post, even if I ultimately post 2-3 sets of data in here. For days I cover (which won't be all days), I'll try to have a "final set" (which will necessarily be incomplete) and at least one full "snapshot set" (usually taken between 2200 and 0400 the night before). I may occasionally keep another set from a day or two before as well, particularly if I think traffic is going to be particularly heavy on a given day.


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## Anderson

Observation set:
18 Sep 18, late-night check (circa 0300):

Southbound, 18 Sep 18:
0600: 1 F, 2 W, 15 Y
0700: 7 F, 3 W, 52 Y
0815: 5 F, 4 W, 37 Y
0915: 3 F, 2 W, 7 Y
1015: 10 F, 4 W, 9 Y
1215: 3 F, 4 W, 9 Y
1415: 3 F, 1 W, 8 Y
1600: 3 F, 2 W, 7 Y
1700: 1 F, 0 W, 19 Y
1800: 3 F, 0 W, 13 Y
1900: 0 F, 0 W, 2 Y
2000: 0 F, 2 W, 53 Y
2100: 6 F, 0 W, 3 Y
All: 45 F, 24 W, 234 Y


Northbound, 18 Sep 18:
0713: 4 F, 2 W, 18 Y
0813: 0 F, 2 W, 12 Y
0913: 0 F, 3 W, 2 Y
1013: 2 F, 1 W, 7 Y
1213: 5 F, 3 W, 7 Y
1413: 9 F, 1 W, 9 Y
1613: 3 F, 6 W, 80 Y
1713: 8 F, 2 W, 31 Y
1813: 4 F, 4 W, 31 Y
1913: 2 F, 0 W, 4 Y
2013: 0 F, 1 W, 1 Y
2113: 1 F, 0 W, 1 Y
2213: 0 F, 0 W, 6 Y
2313: 0 F, 0 W, 3 Y
All: 38 F, 25 W, 212 Y

Observation set: 18 Sep 18, overnight set as amended with day-of observations:



Code:


0600  1 F,  2 W,  24 Y (last minute)
0700  8 F,  3 W,  73 Y (last minute)
0815  6 F,  4 W,  41 Y (partial update)
0915  3 F,  2 W,   7 Y (overnight)
1015 10 F,  4 W,   9 Y (overnight)
1215  3 F,  4 W,   9 Y (overnight)
1415  3 F,  1 W,   8 Y (overnight)
1600  8 F,  7 W,  20 Y (last minute/recollection)
1700  1 F,  2 W,  26 Y (last minute/FLL-MIA)
1800  8 F,  3 W,  19 Y (last minute)
1900  1 F,  2 W,   2 Y (checked 1745)
2000  0 F,  3 W,  64 Y (checked 1745)
2100  7 F,  0 W,   8 Y (checked 1745)

All: 59 F, 37 W, 310 Y (new tally)
All: 45 F, 24 W, 234 Y (overnight tally)
All: 14 F, 13 W,  76 Y (additional sales)

===== ===== ===== ===== =====

0713  4 F,  2 W,  33 Y (last minute)
0813  1 F,  2 W,  12 Y (partial update)
0913  0 F,  3 W,   2 Y (overnight)
1013  2 F,  1 W,   7 Y (overnight)
1213  5 F,  3 W,   7 Y (overnight)
1413  9 F,  1 W,   9 Y (overnight)
1613 13 F,  8 W, 110 Y (last minute/recollection)
1713 13 F,  4 W,  70 Y (last minute)
1813  6 F,  9 W,  63 Y (last minute)
1913  3 F,  2 W,  10 Y (checked 1745)
2013  0 F,  2 W,   2 Y (checked 1745)
2113  1 F,  0 W,   4 Y (checked 1745)
2213  1 F,  1 W,   9 Y (checked 1745)
2313  0 F,  2 W,   5 Y (checked 1745)

All: 58 F, 40 W, 273 Y (new tally)
All: 38 F, 25 W, 212 Y (overnight tally)
All: 20 F, 15 W,  61 Y (additional sales)


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## Anderson

Observation set: 19 Sep 18, late night:

Southbound, 19 Sep 18
0530 1 F, 1 W, 8 Y Last check: 0030
0600 1 F, 1 W, 16 Y Last check: 0033
0700 1 F, 2 W, 41 Y Last check: 0035
0815 5 F, 6 W, 87 Y Last check: 0037
0915 7 F, 21 W, 37 Y Last check: 0041
1015 6 F, 6 W, 29 Y Last check: 0043 
1215 3 F, 9 W, 9 Y Last check: 0045
1415 1 F, 11 W, 29 Y Last check: 0047
1600 4 F, 4 W, 16 Y Last check: 0049
1700 2 F, 8 W, 22 Y Last check: 0050
1800 2 F, 4 W, 12 Y Last check: 0051
1900 0 F, 8 W, 2 Y Last check: 0053
2000 0 F, 0 W, 1 Y Last check: 0054
2100 0 F, 0 W, 0 Y Last check: 0055
All: 33 F, 81 W, 309 Y

Northbound, 19 Sep 18
0713 1 F, 0 W, 22 Y Last check: 0105
0813 0 F, 0 W, 13 Y Last check: 0107
0913 0 F, 1 W, 15 Y Last check: 0109
1013 3 F, 17 W, 63 Y Last check: 0118
1213 1 F, 5 W, 27 Y Last check: 0128
1413 5 F, 12 W, 78 Y Last check: 0131
1613 7 F, 24 W, 47 Y Last check: 0133
1713 3 F, 0 W, 34 Y Last check: 0134
1813 3 F, 6 W, 35 Y Last check: 0136
1913 0 F, 1 W, 7 Y Last check: 0138
2013 1 F, 0 W, 2 Y Last check: 0140
2113 1 F, 0 W, 2 Y Last check: 0141
2213 0 F, 0 W, 3 Y Last check: 0142
2313 0 F, 4 W, 4 Y Last check: 0144
All: 25 F, 70 W, 352 Y
Follow-up note 1: Usually, trains "vanish" ten minutes prior to departure. The 0530 did so from the website 21 minutes out, as I was going to check up on it. Quite odd.

Final observations from today:

Southbound, 19 Sep 18
0530 1 F, 1 W, 8 Y Last check: 0030
0600 3 F, 1 W, 22 Y Last check: 0549
0700 1 F, 2 W, 63 Y Last check: 0649
0815 10 F, 6 W, 105 Y Last check: 0804
0915 7 F, 21 W, 39 Y Last check: 0708
1015 6 F, 6 W, 29 Y Last check: 0710
1215 3 F, 9 W, 9 Y Last check: 0045
1415 1 F, 11 W, 29 Y Last check: 0047
1600 9 F, 6 W, 38 Y Last check: 1549
1700 8 F, 17 W, 37 Y Last check: 1632
1800 7 F, 4 W, 27 Y Last check: 1542
1900 12 F, 8 W, 14 Y Last check: 1840
2000 0 F, 0 W, 20 Y Last check: 1829
2100 0 F, 1 W, 13 Y Last check: 1830
All: 68 F, 93 W, 453 Y (2200)
All: 61 F, 90 W, 437 Y (1600)
All: 33 F, 81 W, 309 Y (Overnight)

Northbound, 19 Sep 18
0713 4 F, 0 W, 31 Y Last check: 0702
0813 2 F, 0 W, 19 Y Last check: 0742
0913 0 F, 1 W, 15 Y Last check: 0109
1013 3 F, 17 W, 63 Y Last check: 0118
1213 1 F, 5 W, 27 Y Last check: 0128
1413 5 F, 12 W, 78 Y Last check: 0131
1613 17 F, 27 W, 102 Y Last check: 1602
1713 8 F, 2 W, 82 Y Last check: 1702
1813 5 F, 5 W, 63 Y Last check: 1802
1913 1 F, 3 W, 16 Y Last check: 1835
2013 1 F, 2 W, 17 Y Last check: 1959
2113 2 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 1529
2213 2 F, 0 W, 10 Y Last check: 2150
2313 1 F, 6 W, 11 Y Last check: 2153
All: 52 F, 80 W, 540 Y (2300)
All: 43 F, 75 W, 471 Y (1600)
All: 25 F, 70 W, 352 Y (Overnight)
Discussion:
Direct observation on Wednesday is of 1286 tickets sold, as follows:

-Southbound: 614
-Northbound: 672

-120 Select (9.3%)
-173 SmartPlus (13.5%)
-993 Smart (77.2%)

My best estimate is that I missed out on between 150 and 200 sales due to not being online (based on overall ticketing patterns). I also suspect that I may have missed another 100-150 seats that were double-sold and/or sold from Fort Lauderdale after booking closed out of the origin station. I tend to err towards the middle on missed-out last-minute sales and on the higher end for intermediate destination sales. Still, the overall ticket sales range is betwee 1286 (a safe hard floor) and 1636; zeroing in, I would put it between 1400 and 1600.


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## AGM.12

I may have missed it earlier, but could you explain what F, W, Y mean and what these charts mean to show?


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## jis

I suspect F is Select, W is Smart with service pack and Y is bare Smart.


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## Anderson

That's correct. Let me note that in the initial post.

(With an airline, F is First, W is often used for "economy comfort" or something similar, and Y is for regular economy; were Brightline to add a "basic economy" product of some sort, that would be E, and another premium product would likely get J)


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## AGM.12

Thanks for the explanation.


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## Anderson

Report for 20 Sep 18:

Southbound 20 Sep 18
0530 1 F, 1 W, 9 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
0600 2 F, 2 W, 14 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
0700 11 F, 5 W, 54 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
0815 10 F, 3 W, 13 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
0915 3 F, 8 W, 6 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1015 2 F, 5 W, 11 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1215 4 F, 5 W, 4 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1415 9 F, 1 W, 6 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1600 5 F, 4 W, 11 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1700 0 F, 2 W, 15 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1800 4 F, 1 W, 72 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1900 0 F, 1 W, 1 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2000 0 F, 0 W, 1 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2100 0 F, 0 W, 0 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
All: 51 F, 38 W, 217 Y


Northbound 20 Sep 18
0713 4 F, 2 W, 17 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
0813 5 F, 6 W, 6 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
0913 1 F, 0 W, 3 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1013 12 F, 0 W, 4 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1213 2 F, 1 W, 6 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1413 6 F, 9 W, 9 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1613 4 F, 6 W, 19 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1713 5 F, 1 W, 91 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1813 3 F, 5 W, 24 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
1913 2 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2013 0 F, 1 W, 4 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2113 1 F, 3 W, 4 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2213 0 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2313 0 F, 0 W, 3 Y Last check: 0000 (09/19)
All: 45 F, 34 W, 202 Y
End-of-day tallying:



Code:


Southbound 20 Sep 18
0530  1 F,  1 W,   9 Y  Last check: 0000 (09/19)
0600  3 F,  2 W,  23 Y  Last check: 0547
0700 12 F,  6 W,  72 Y  Last check: 0649
0815 11 F,  6 W,  38 Y  Last check: 0751
0915  7 F,  8 W,  31 Y  Last check: 0904
1015  3 F,  5 W,  12 Y  Last check: 0852
1215  7 F,  8 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0855
1415  9 F,  1 W,   6 Y  Last check: 0857
1600 10 F,  9 W,  17 Y  Last check: 1531
1700  2 F,  5 W,  34 Y  Last check: 1708 (FLL-MIA)
1800  5 F,  2 W,  79 Y  Last check: 1759 (FLL-MIA)
1900 10 F,  0 W,   9 Y  Last check: 1834
2000  0 F,  0 W,   1 Y  Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2100  0 F,  0 W,   0 Y  Last check: 0000 (09/19)
All: 80 F, 53 W, 336 Y


Northbound 20 Sep 18
0713  7 F,  3 W,  24 Y  Last check: 0703
0813  5 F,  6 W,   7 Y  Last check: 0654
0913  1 F,  1 W,  13 Y  Last check: 0901
1013 13 F,  0 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0907
1213  3 F,  1 W,   8 Y  Last check: 0910
1413  6 F,  9 W,   9 Y  Last check: 0912
1613  8 F,  8 W,  43 Y  Last check: 1535
1713  8 F,  8 W, 123 Y  Last check: 1703
1813  4 F, 10 W,  88 Y  Last check: 1800
1913  4 F,  0 W,  25 Y  Last check: 1858
2013  0 F,  1 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0000 (09/19)
2113  2 F,  5 W,  13 Y  Last check: 2102
2213  5 F,  0 W,  19 Y  Last check: 2156
2313  0 F,  1 W,   8 Y  Last check: 2206
All: 66 F, 53 W, 388 Y


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## Anderson

Report for 21 Sep 18:

Southbound 21 Sep 18
0530 1 F, 0 W, 2 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
0600 2 F, 0 W, 11 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
0700 4 F, 0 W, 23 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
0800 2 F, 6 W, 15 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
0900 4 F, 2 W, 2 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1000 0 F, 2 W, 11 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1100 1 F, 0 W, 8 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1200 1 F, 0 W, 2 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1400 4 F, 1 W, 5 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1500 2 F, 0 W, 0 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1600 3 F, 5 W, 10 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1700 13 F, 9 W, 12 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1800 0 F, 11 W, 5 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1900 3 F, 11 W, 6 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
2000 0 F, 0 W, 1 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
2100 2 F, 0 W, 4 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
42 F, 47 W, 117 Y


Northbound 21 Sep 18
0713 2 F, 1 W, 12 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
0813 1 F, 0 W, 5 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
0913 0 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1013 0 F, 0 W, 5 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1113 4 F, 0 W, 1 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1213 2 F, 3 W, 4 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1313 1 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1413 2 F, 2 W, 8 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1613 7 F, 1 W, 12 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1713 6 F, 0 W, 33 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1813 1 F, 0 W, 17 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
1913 2 F, 4 W, 1 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
2013 2 F, 0 W, 1 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
2113 0 F, 1 W, 0 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
2213 2 F, 0 W, 4 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
2313 0 F, 13 W, 4 Y Last check: 0230 (09/19)
32 F, 25 W, 119 Y
21 Sep 18, night before tally:

Southbound 21 Sep 18
0530 2 F, 1 W, 7 Y Last check: 2245 (09/20)
0600 8 F, 0 W, 20 Y Last check: 2248 (09/20)
0700 8 F, 0 W, 38 Y Last check: 2250 (09/20)
0800 4 F, 7 W, 36 Y Last check: 2252 (09/20)
0900 6 F, 6 W, 9 Y Last check: 2256 (09/20)
1000 2 F, 2 W, 15 Y Last check: 2257 (09/20)
1100 2 F, 3 W, 12 Y Last check: 2300 (09/20)
1200 1 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 2312 (09/20)
1400 4 F, 1 W, 8 Y Last check: 2314 (09/20)
1500 3 F, 3 W, 10 Y Last check: 2315 (09/20)
1600 1 F, 9 W, 18 Y Last check: 2318 (09/20)
1700 16 F, 9 W, 20 Y Last check: 2320 (09/20)
1800 5 F, 9 W, 15 Y Last check: 2326 (09/20)
1900 4 F, 12 W, 6 Y Last check: 2327 (09/20)
2000 0 F, 0 W, 1 Y Last check: 2329 (09/20)
2100 2 F, 0 W, 7 Y Last check: 2330 (09/20)
68 F, 62 W, 228 Y


Northbound 21 Sep 18
0713 3 F, 1 W, 15 Y Last check: 2218 (09/20)
0813 1 F, 0 W, 9 Y Last check: 2221 (09/20)
0913 0 F, 0 W, 16 Y Last check: 2223 (09/20)
1013 0 F, 1 W, 9 Y Last check: 2232 (09/20)
1113 2 F, 2 W, 5 Y Last check: 2335 (09/20)
1213 2 F, 4 W, 7 Y Last check: 2337 (09/20)
1313 3 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 2339 (09/20)
1413 5 F, 4 W, 13 Y Last check: 2340 (09/20)
1613 11 F, 4 W, 25 Y Last check: 2342 (09/20)
1713 5 F, 1 W, 46 Y Last check: 2344 (09/20)
1813 6 F, 0 W, 29 Y Last check: 2346 (09/20)
1913 3 F, 3 W, 2 Y Last check: 2347 (09/20)
2013 2 F, 0 W, 3 Y Last check: 2349 (09/20)
2113 0 F, 1 W, 0 Y Last check: 2350 (09/20)
2213 2 F, 0 W, 6 Y Last check: 2356 (09/20)
2313 0 F, 9 W, 21 Y Last check: 2357 (09/20)
45 F, 30 W, 191 Y
End-of-day report:

Southbound 21 Sep 18
0530 2 F, 1 W, 7 Y Last check: 2245 (09/20)
0600 8 F, 0 W, 20 Y Last check: 2248 (09/20)
0700 8 F, 0 W, 38 Y Last check: 2250 (09/20)
0800 4 F, 7 W, 36 Y Last check: 2252 (09/20)
0900 6 F, 6 W, 9 Y Last check: 2256 (09/20)
1000 2 F, 2 W, 15 Y Last check: 2257 (09/20)
1100 6 F, 3 W, 30 Y Last check: 1112 (FLL-MIA)
1200 7 F, 8 W, 17 Y Last check: 1148
1400 13 F, 2 W, 38 Y Last check: 1349
1500 3 F, 6 W, 12 Y Last check: 1110
1600 2 F, 10 W, 25 Y Last check: 1145
1700 24 F, 8 W, 48 Y Last check: 1728 (FLL-MIA)
1800 12 F, 6 W, 35 Y Last check: 1749
1900 11 F, 12 W, 13 Y Last check: 1847
2000 4 F, 1 W, 8 Y Last check: 1940
2100 4 F, 1 W, 28 Y Last check: 2049
116 F, 73 W, 379 Y


Northbound 21 Sep 18
0713 3 F, 1 W, 15 Y Last check: 2218 (09/20)
0813 1 F, 0 W, 9 Y Last check: 2221 (09/20)
0913 0 F, 0 W, 16 Y Last check: 2223 (09/20)
1013 0 F, 1 W, 9 Y Last check: 2232 (09/20)
1113 3 F, 1 W, 13 Y Last check: 1100
1213 3 F, 7 W, 14 Y Last check: 1159
1313 7 F, 0 W, 35 Y Last check: 1301
1413 9 F, 23 W, 49 Y Last check: 1400
1613 12 F, 6 W, 39 Y Last check: 1207
1713 12 F, 6 W, 97 Y Last check: 1702
1813 6 F, 1 W, 53 Y Last check: 1801
1913 8 F, 5 W, 17 Y Last check: 1804
2013 7 F, 2 W, 13 Y Last check: 1947
2113 7 F, 4 W, 69 Y Last check: 2055 (Last car blocked?)
2213 4 F, 7 W, 15 Y Last check: 2200
2313 4 F, 2 W, 19 Y Last check: 2242
86 F, 66 W, 482 Y
Overall notes:
-As indicated, I did not get any readings in the morning.
-I also missed out on several readings at the start of the afternoon rush.
-The 2113 saw a massive swing in ridership between my check around 1730 and the final check at 2055, centering around the whole back car being indicated as not available. This creates a possible "error" of 50-odd passengers (and helpls explain a major increase in the difference between ridership in each direction at the proverbial last minute). I'm always worried when a car is fully sold-out...it's just too "neat" for my tastes. I'm even more worried when it seems to happen in the last few hours before departure, with a car that was mostly showing as empty before.

Recorded ridership is 568 southbound and 634 northbound (so 1202 total). I probably missed out on about 100-150 riders in the morning (based on past history) and another 50 or so in the afternoon. Accounting for turnover and missed late purchases out of Fort Lauderdale (and being cautious about that major sale on the 2113 train), I think a ridership estimate of 1400-1500 feels about right.


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## Anderson

Just as an update, but I am looking at Brightline's pricing for tomorrow, and for Miami-West Palm Beach there are three trains (0813, 1213, and 2113) which are showing Smart/SmartPlus at $15/20 instead of $20/25, respectively.


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## Anderson

Southbound 22 Sep 18
0700 3 F, 0 W, 5 Y Last check: 0113 (09/21)
0900 1 F, 16 W, 82 Y Last check: 0116 (09/21)
1100 32 F, 24 W, 48 Y Last check: 0118 (09/21)
1300 7 F, 3 W, 43 Y Last check: 0120 (09/21)
1500 9 F, 16 W, 9 Y Last check: 0121 (09/21)
1700 16 F, 18 W, 12 Y Last check: 0123 (09/21)
1900 8 F, 10 W, 10 Y Last check: 0124 (09/21)
2100 0 F, 4 W, 6 Y Last check: 0126 (09/21)
76 F, 91 W, 215 Y


Northbound 22 Sep 18
0913 10 F, 2 W, 30 Y Last check: 0132 (09/21)
1113 8 F, 19 W, 27 Y Last check: 0134 (09/21)
1313 1 F, 10 W, 6 Y Last check: 0136 (09/21)
1513 7 F, 10 W, 75 Y Last check: 0139 (09/21)
1713 12 F, 29 W, 40 Y Last check: 0141 (09/21)
1913 19 F, 1 W, 28 Y Last check: 0146 (09/21)
2113 2 F, 14 W, 7 Y Last check: 0148 (09/21)
2358 9 F, 13 W, 11 Y Last check: 0150 (09/21)
68 F, 98 W, 224 Y
Quick commentary: The SB 1100 train shows the first example I've seen of variable pricing for Select ($45 instead of $40), and I'm tending to see at least one train in each direction per day on most days sporting a $15 Smart fare (generally in the off-peak hours). SmartPlus is locked to Smart+$5.

Also, I am a bit surprised...despite having about half of the trains on Saturday vs Friday, 148 more seats have been sold for Saturday's trains than Friday's trains at present, and about 390 more than at the same relative point in time (e.g. 0200 Wednesday/Thursday night for Friday, 0200 Thursday/Friday night for Saturday). Clearly there's a bit more advance purchasing going on for weekends than weekdays (though the cause is up for discussion). Load factor for Saturday is already around 21% overall (though it's a bit below 19% in Select and Smart, it's close to 40% in SmartPlus).

Night-before tally:

Southbound 22 Sep 18
0700 5 F, 0 W, 10 Y Last check: 0003
0900 6 F, 21 W, 115 Y Last check: 0006
1100 41 F, 32 W, 75 Y Last check: 0008 [1]
1300 6 F, 12 W, 49 Y Last check: 0011
1500 23 F, 18 W, 33 Y Last check: 0013
1700 20 F, 18 W, 38 Y Last check: 0015
1900 13 F, 10 W, 21 Y Last check: 0017
2100 0 F, 4 W, 22 Y Last check: 0018
114 F, 115 W, 363 Y


Northbound 22 Sep 18
0913 19 F, 4 W, 55 Y Last check: 0022
1113 16 F, 24 W, 67 Y Last check: 0024
1313 5 F, 16 W, 17 Y Last check: 0026
1513 9 F, 15 W, 89 Y Last check: 0028
1713 16 F, 30 W, 67 Y Last check: 0030
1913 20 F, 6 W, 61 Y Last check: 0032
2113 6 F, 14 W, 16 Y Last check: 0033
2313 13 F, 11 W, 19 Y Last check: 0035 [2]
104 F, 120 W, 391 Y
[1] SmartPlus not available for purchase; based on last night's numbers, SmartPlus is sold out.

[2] Train was listed as a 2358 departure last night but 2313 tonight; not sure if the former was a mistake or there was a timetabling experiment.

Total ridership indicated is 592 southbound and 615 northbound. Load factor overall is 32.5% going into the day of travel, breaking down to:

-Smart: 31.0%

-SmartPlus: 45.9%

-Select: 28.4%

There are several sections that are candidates for selling out tomorrow. If anyone would like to, I would appreciate some load checks throughout the day. I will try to run checks on my end, but I won't have all-day availability...and it's going to be interesting to see how close some of the more-crowded trains come to capacity.

Day-of notes:

-I didn't get a booking snapshot of the 1100 train out of WPB (I got pulled into another matter), but Select was showing at $60 (instead of the usual $40). Load FLL-MIA, however, was 44 F 29 W 131 Y as of 1103. Ticket price FLL-MIA in Select was $50 FLL-MIA (or nearly $2/seat-mile). I indicate this as a note because I don't want to obliterate evidence of what was still a sellout WPB-MIA when I tried to start my load check.

Southbound 22 Sep 18
0700 5 F, 0 W, 10 Y Last check: 0003
0900 6 F, 21 W, 115 Y Last check: 0006
1100 44 F, 29 W, 131 Y Last check: 1103 [1]
1300 21 F, 29 W, 98 Y Last check: 1324 [2]
1500 29 F, 27 W, 81 Y Last check: 1444
1700 35 F, 32 W, 102 Y Last check: 1649 [5]
1900 21 F, 32 W, 79 Y Last check: 1849 [7]
2100 2 F, 18 W, 53 Y Last check: 2048
163 F, 188 W, 669 Y (circa 2230)


Northbound 22 Sep 18
0913 19 F, 4 W, 55 Y Last check: 0022
1113 18 F, 24 W, 117 Y Last check: 1058
1313 17 F, 30 W, 70 Y Last check: 1328 [3]
1513 34 F, 32 W, 152 Y Last check: 1502 [4]
1713 34 F, 32 W, 132 Y Last check: 1702 [6]
1913 24 F, 17 W, 141 Y Last check: 1902
2113 11 F, 24 W, 62 Y Last check: 2058
2313 16 F, 11 W, 46 Y Last check: 2229
173 F, 174 W, 775 Y (circa 2230)
[1] FLL-MIA. Load from previous night was 41 F 32 W 75 Y.

[2] FLL-MIA

[3] FLL-PBI

[4] SmartPlus was sold out. Smart was showing seats at $20, but refusing to show seats, so either the system was allowing wheelchair bookings but not regular ones or there's a glitch.

[5] SmartPlus showing availability at $25, but refusing to assign seats as of 1558. See [4].

[6] SmartPlus showing availability at $25, but refusing to assign seats as of 1630. As of 1558 only one seat was available. See [4].

[7] SmartPlus showing availability at $25, but refusing to assign seats as of 1843. As of 1838 only two seats were available. See [4].

General notes:

Pricing:

Smart: $15 for the first 10% of seats or thereabouts, $20 for the rest.

SmartPlus: Prevailing Smart fare plus $5.

Select: $40 for about the first 50% of seats (24). $45 for the next 40% (19). $60 for the last 10% (5).

Day-of updates:

-I was unable to properly log the first few trains of the morning. Obviously, with the afternoon trains, there's still booking time to be had. The 1PM wave of trains also got flubbed, but the FLL-originating data paints a pretty solid picture.

-A near-final "hard log" (I'm not certain I'll get a final fix on the 2313 train at the moment) produces the following load factors:

Northbound:

-Smart: 775 (of 1216), 63.7%

-SmartPlus: 174 (of 256), 68.0%

-Select: 173 (of 384), 45.1%

-Total: 1122 (of 1856) 60.5%

Southbound:

-Smart: 669 (of 1216), 55.0%

-SmartPlus: 188 (of 256), 73.4%

-Select: 163 (of 384), 42.4%

-Total: 1020 (of 1856), 55.0%

Grand total: 2142 (of 3712), or 57.7%

Note that these numbers are almost assuredly low due, in particular, to not getting a record of the 9AM wave (7AM may or may not have significant ridership). Accounting for those errors, I'm guessing that overall load factor is going to come in around 62-65% for the day (I figure overall ridership settled somewhere around 2300-2450, depending on assumptions about turnover at FLL and late-purchased tickets there...2300 for near-zero turnover, 2450 if you presume about 150 seats turned over; I suspect turnover would have been more of this than "normal" given the sheer loads, but there was also less room for late sales becaue of those same loads).

-Also, as a general thought, but it seems quite possible that Brightline is going to want to look into laying on some additional trains on Saturdays. Considering that the first and last trains for the day are going to have a decent amount of empty space, there's a practial limit in terms of load factor.


----------



## Anderson

Southbound 23 Sep 18
0700 0 F, 1 W, 1 Y Last check: 0046 (09/22)
0900 2 F, 3 W, 31 Y Last check: 0049 (09/22)
1100 5 F, 11 W, 45 Y Last check: 0050 (09/22)
1300 1 F, 11 W, 9 Y Last check: 0052 (09/22)
1500 4 F, 2 W, 15 Y Last check: 0054 (09/22)
1700 5 F, 14 W, 62 Y Last check: 0056 (09/22)
1900 4 F, 8 W, 16 Y Last check: 0057 (09/22)
21 F, 50 W, 179 Y

Northbound 23 Sep 18
0913 4 F, 1 W, 32 Y Last check: 0102 (09/22)
1113 16 F, 20 W, 52 Y Last check: 0104 (09/22)
1313 2 F, 9 W, 19 Y Last check: 0105 (09/22)
1513 8 F, 3 W, 15 Y Last check: 0106 (09/22)
1713 7 F, 14 W, 36 Y Last check: 0108 (09/22)
1913 2 F, 0 W, 20 Y Last check: 0109 (09/22)
2113 2 F, 0 W, 3 Y Last check: 0000 (09/22)
41 F, 47 W, 177 Y
Thoughts:

-Sunday ridership is tracking at about 67% of Saturday's. This isn't terribly shocking given results on other transit systems (e.g. MARC runs fewer trains on Sunday than Saturday on the Penn Line).

Southbound 23 Sep 18
0700 1 F, 1 W, 6 Y Last check: 2320 (09/22)
0900 8 F, 10 W, 61 Y Last check: 2322 (09/22)
1100 17 F, 29 W, 65 Y Last check: 2324 (09/22)
1300 2 F, 13 W, 20 Y Last check: 2336 (09/22)
1500 5 F, 6 W, 28 Y Last check: 2338 (09/22)
1700 15 F, 17 W, 95 Y Last check: 2340 (09/22)
1900 4 F, 11 W, 30 Y Last check: 2342 (09/22)
52 F, 87 W, 305 Y

Northbound 23 Sep 18
0913 3 F, 19 W, 49 Y Last check: 2345 (09/22)
1113 22 F, 32 W, 87 Y Last check: 2346 (09/22)
1313 4 F, 11 W, 39 Y Last check: 2349 (09/22)
1513 8 F, 14 W, 37 Y Last check: 2352 (09/22)
1713 9 F, 22 W, 56 Y Last check: 2353 (09/22)
1913 4 F, 8 W, 27 Y Last check: 2354 (09/22)
2113 3 F, 0 W, 9 Y Last check: 2356 (09/22)
53 F, 106 W, 304 Y
Thoughts: Ridership is now tracking at 75% of Saturday's ridership. It is also outpacing any weekday recorded so far at this point (though it is only barely ahead of Wednesday the 19th).

Southbound 23 Sep 18
0700 1 F, 1 W, 6 Y Last check: 2320 (09/22)
0900 8 F, 10 W, 61 Y Last check: 2322 (09/22)
1100 34 F, 32 W, 152 Y Last check: 1049 [1]
1300 11 F, 24 W, 45 Y Last check: 1243
1500 14 F, 22 W, 84 Y Last check: 1449
1700 22 F, 23 W, 134 Y Last check: 1638
1900 7 F, 25 W, 88 Y Last check: 1833
97 F, 137 W, 570Y

Northbound 23 Sep 18
0913 3 F, 19 W, 49 Y Last check: 2345 (09/22)
1113 27 F, 32 W, 121 Y Last check: 1101
1313 11 F, 19 W, 92 Y Last check: 1256
1513 22 F, 18 W, 144 Y Last check: 1501
1713 18 F, 32 W, 140 Y Last check: 1640 [2]
1913 6 F, 25 W, 54 Y Last check: 1858
2113 7 F, 7 W, 25 Y Last check: 2031
94 F, 152 W, 625 Y
[1] SmartPlus is sold out. Smart is showing availability at $20 but system refuses to sell tickets.

[2] SmartPlus is sold out. Smart is showing availability at $20 but system refuses to sell tickets. SmartPlus previously showed as sold out.


----------



## cbustrains

Anderson, great work in tallying all of that! Very interesting results-- I'm particularly surprised that the weekend ridership is so much higher yet the frequencies are much lower; as you've alluded to, it seems like they would benefit from more weekend trains.

I've been trying to replicate Brightline's forecasted financial statements using the various reports out there today; once I get that in a better position, I'll share the Google Sheets link on here. From my preliminary analyses, Brightline is aiming for a ~62% load factor and ~$1.02 per passenger mile. This is (I'm sure not coincidentally) very similar to Acela's 61% load factor and $0.92 per seat mile last year. Brightline also has some ramp up assumptions in their reports so I'm expecting that I can derive some estimate of load factor and revenue per seat mile within the initial stages as well to see how it compares with your sample findings.

Though Brightline doesn't need a 60%+ load factor to succeed, it does seem like they are still a far cry from reaching those types of numbers on a consistent basis.


----------



## Anderson

Guessing at revenue on this is a bit hard due to the special offers (the 2-for-1 in particular), affinity discounts (10% NARP/RPA and military), and weekday commuter tickets (which I don't have a guess at pricing on).

However, let's try to tease this out:
Select:
-Presume all seats are sold at $40/seat, no turnover.

SmartPlus:
-Presume that 60% of seats are sold at $25, 40% at $20.
-Presume that half of seats are sold under the 2-for-1 offer (so 1/4 of sales are eliminated).
-Add 10% for turnover/late sales.

Smart:
-Presume that 80% of seats are sold at $20, 20% at $15.
-Presume that half of seats are sold under the 2-for-1 offer and/or as reduced-price commuter tickets, effecting the same result (25% of sales are eliminated).
-Add 10% for turnover/late sales.

Running these numbers for Saturday, I would further adjust by adding 100 Smart, 25 SmartPlus, and 20 Select sales (trying to guess at the sales I missed on three early trains) would give us the following figures:

-Select: 356 seats sold (163 SB, 173 NB, and 20 adjusted)
--Revenue is $14,240.
-SmartPlus: 387 seats sold (188 SB, 174 NB, and 25 adjusted)
--Revenue is $7,343.
-Smart: 1544 seats sold (669 SB, 775 NB, and 100 adjusted)
--Revenue is $24,202.

Overall revenue would be $45,785 for the day. RASM would be $0.1622.

===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Obviously, I'm trying to work out what sorts of presumptions to make...part of why I'm happy to put as much data as I can harvest up here is that I'd like help in adjusting these inputs so I can actually get a feel for ticket prices, revenues, etc.

Something to bear in mind is that if Saturday's load factors were replicated across the month, ridership would be about 114k for the month. Instead, what we have thus far is:
-Tuesday:
--Hard count: 117 F, 77 W, 583 Y
---Notes: I missed a few mote trains, number-wise, but I did get solid rush hour data.

-Wednesday:
--Hard count: 120 F, 173 W, 993 Y
---Notes: I got both rush hours, but missed out on a slab of mid-morning and mid-afternoon trains. Smaller adjustment needed than usual.

-Thursday:
--Hard count: 146 F, 106 W, 724 Y
---Notes: Morning rush good. Botched up part of the afternoon rush and had to substitute FLL-MIA for the SB trains. Also did not get close-in checks on trains starting after 0900 through just before 1600.

-Friday:
--Hard count: 202 F, 139 W, 861 Y
---Notes: Completely missed the morning rush. Afternoon/evening coverage was good except for missing the 1600 trains.

-Saturday:
--Hard count: 336 F, 362 W, 1444 Y
---Notes: Missed checks on the first three trains of the day. Partly fumbled two more SB checks and had to sub FLL-MIA.

-Sunday:
--Hard count: 191 F, 289 W, 1195 Y
---Notes: Missed the same trains as Saturday but got reasonably good checks on all of the others.

-Grand total (6 days):
--Hard count: 1112 F, 1146 W, 5800 Y
---Without adjustment, this is 8,058 tickets sold. Since September has five weekends, this corresponds pretty nicely to 1/5 of the month (10 weekend days, 20 weekdays, albeit with an asterisk on Labor Day), so you would expect monthly ridership to be around 40,000.
---With the adjustments (most of which I noted during the week), I think you could reasonably add about 1000 to this count, maybe 1500. That would put monthly ridership in the ballpark of 45-50k. Given that some of this is based on weekdays without all 16 round-trips, and given that the one odd day (Labor Day) would presumably behave as a weekend (and thus have, presumably, an extra 500-1000 riders) then I would err towards the high side. Still, getting on towards 50k riders per month is at least steady progress from the 30k/month we would have been looking at back in late spring.

---Again, I have no idea whether I simply drew odd days for this; I'll try to keep some observations coming as best I can (but I can tell you, this is exhausting and time-consuming to round up so I can't do it every day).


----------



## Anderson

Code:


Southbound 25 Sep 18
0530  0 F,  0 W,   9 Y  Last check: 0400
0600  2 F,  4 W,  16 Y  Last check: 0402
0700  4 F,  4 W,  37 Y  Last check: 0410
0800  9 F,  6 W,  29 Y  Last check: 0415
0900  6 F,  0 W,  17 Y  Last check: 0417
1000  2 F,  1 W,  12 Y  Last check: 0419
1100  0 F,  4 W,  18 Y  Last check: 0420
1200  3 F,  2 W,  12 Y  Last check: 0421
1400  3 F,  0 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0422
1500  4 F,  0 W,   6 Y  Last check: 0424
1600  3 F,  1 W,  10 Y  Last check: 0425
1700  5 F,  0 W,  72 Y  Last check: 0427 [1]
1800  2 F,  0 W,  18 Y  Last check: 0428
1900  1 F,  0 W,   3 Y  Last check: 0429
2000  0 F,  0 W,   3 Y  Last check: 0431
2100  1 F,  1 W,   2 Y  Last check: 0432
     45 F, 23 W, 259 Y

Northbound 25 Sep 18
0713  4 F,  2 W,  23 Y  Last check: 0434
0813  3 F,  2 W,   9 Y  Last check: 0436
0913  1 F,  3 W,   2 Y  Last check: 0438
1013  8 F,  1 W,  18 Y  Last check: 0439
1113  0 F,  4 W,   3 Y  Last check: 0440
1213  3 F,  0 W,  16 Y  Last check: 0442
1313  0 F,  2 W,   6 Y  Last check: 0443
1413  6 F,  2 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0444
1613  7 F,  3 W,  33 Y  Last check: 0446
1713  6 F,  1 W,  34 Y  Last check: 0447
1813  4 F,  0 W,  29 Y  Last check: 0449
1913  1 F,  0 W,  10 Y  Last check: 0450
2013  3 F,  0 W,  61 Y  Last check: 0452 [2]
2113  1 F,  1 W,   1 Y  Last check: 0455
2213  0 F,  1 W,   7 Y  Last check: 0456
2313  2 F,  0 W,   1 Y  Last check: 0457
     49 F, 22 W, 258 Y

[1][2] It looks like there's a large group doing a round-trip based on the two large blocks of adjacent seats sold out.

General observation: Ridership is roughly tracking in line with last Tuesday.


----------



## Anderson

Southbound 27 Sep 18
0530 1 F, 0 W, 11 Y Last check: 0519
0600 2 F, 2 W, 12 Y Last check: 0502
0700 6 F, 5 W, 56 Y Last check: 0505
0800 2 F, 6 W, 37 Y Last check: 0508
0900 2 F, 0 W, 8 Y Last check: 0510
1000 8 F, 2 W, 10 Y Last check: 0514
1100 6 F, 1 W, 12 Y Last check: 0524
1200 5 F, 7 W, 13 Y Last check: 0527
1400 2 F, 4 W, 24 Y Last check: 0530
1500 11 F, 6 W, 6 Y Last check: 0535
1600 3 F, 5 W, 18 Y Last check: 0537
1700 11 F, 5 W, 21 Y Last check: 0541
1800 1 F, 0 W, 22 Y Last check: 0542
1900 0 F, 1 W, 74 Y Last check: 0544
2000 1 F, 0 W, 5 Y Last check: 0545
2100 0 F, 3 W, 4 Y Last check: 0547
61 F, 47 W, 333 Y


Northbound 27 Sep 18
0713 7 F, 2 W, 27 Y Last check: 0551
0813 1 F, 2 W, 10 Y Last check: 0557
0913 0 F, 4 W, 1 Y Last check: 0559
1013 8 F, 1 W, 7 Y Last check: 0601
1113 0 F, 8 W, 12 Y Last check: 0603
1213 0 F, 3 W, 6 Y Last check: 0604
1313 0 F, 0 W, 18 Y Last check: 0606
1413 6 F, 3 W, 11 Y Last check: 0624
1613 7 F, 7 W, 26 Y Last check: 0627
1713 2 F, 3 W, 38 Y Last check: 0631
1813 5 F, 3 W, 96 Y Last check: 0635
1913 1 F, 0 W, 12 Y Last check: 0638
2013 0 F, 5 W, 5 Y Last check: 0641
2113 4 F, 3 W, 13 Y Last check: 0642
2213 0 F, 1 W, 6 Y Last check: 0644
2313 3 F, 2 W, 1 Y Last check: 0645
44 F, 47 W, 288 Y

Note: Fares have all been dropped back to $15/$20/$30 on all trains. We will see if there's still an attempt to maximize yield for more crowded trains.

End-of-day report:



Code:
 

Southbound 27 Sep 18
0530  1 F,  0 W,  11 Y  Last check: 0519
0600  3 F,  2 W,  22 Y  Last check: 0549
0700  7 F,  4 W,  76 Y    Last check: 0649
0800  2 F,  6 W,  37 Y  Last check: 0508
0900  2 F,  0 W,   8 Y  Last check: 0510
1000  8 F,  2 W,  10 Y  Last check: 0514
1100  6 F,  1 W,  12 Y  Last check: 0524
1200  5 F,  7 W,  13 Y  Last check: 0527
1400  7 F,  3 W,  36 Y  Last check: 1338
1500 18 F, 15 W,  20 Y  Last check: 1449
1600 10 F, 13 W,  28 Y  Last check: 1549
1700  8 F, 12 W,  50 Y  Last check: 1649
1800  5 F,  4 W,  32 Y  Last check: 1652
1900 11 F,  2 W,  89 Y  Last check: 1849
2000  1 F,  0 W,   7 Y  Last check: 1904
2100  0 F,  6 W,   5 Y  Last check: 1905
     94 F, 77 W, 456 Y


Northbound 27 Sep 18
0713  9 F,  3 W,  32 Y  Last check: 0659
0813  1 F,  2 W,  10 Y  Last check: 0557
0913  0 F,  4 W,   1 Y  Last check: 0559
1013  8 F,  1 W,   7 Y  Last check: 0601
1113  0 F,  8 W,  12 Y  Last check: 0603
1213  0 F,  3 W,   6 Y  Last check: 0604
1313  0 F,  0 W,  18 Y  Last check: 0606
1413  5 F,  4 W,  24 Y  Last check: 1408 [FLL-PBI]
1613 17 F,  9 W,  71 Y  Last check: 1602
1713 10 F,  7 W,  67 Y  Last check: 1702
1813  7 F,  4 W, 118 Y  Last check: 1802
1913  9 F,  2 W,  30 Y  Last check: 1901
2013  1 F,  6 W,  11 Y  Last check: 1858
2113 10 F,  1 W,  38 Y  Last check: 1439
2213  0 F,  3 W,   5 Y  Last check: 1441
2313  3 F,  2 W,   1 Y  Last check: 1443
     80 F, 59 W, 451 Y


----------



## cpotisch

Anderson said:


> Southbound 27 Sep 18
> 0530 1 F, 0 W, 11 Y Last check: 0519
> 0600 2 F, 2 W, 12 Y Last check: 0502
> 0700 6 F, 5 W, 56 Y Last check: 0505
> 0800 2 F, 6 W, 37 Y Last check: 0508
> 0900 2 F, 0 W, 8 Y Last check: 0510
> 1000 8 F, 2 W, 10 Y Last check: 0514
> 1100 6 F, 1 W, 12 Y Last check: 0524
> 1200 5 F, 7 W, 13 Y Last check: 0527
> 1400 2 F, 4 W, 24 Y Last check: 0530
> 1500 11 F, 6 W, 6 Y Last check: 0535
> 1600 3 F, 5 W, 18 Y Last check: 0537
> 1700 11 F, 5 W, 21 Y Last check: 0541
> 1800 1 F, 0 W, 22 Y Last check: 0542
> 1900 0 F, 1 W, 74 Y Last check: 0544
> 2000 1 F, 0 W, 5 Y Last check: 0545
> 2100 0 F, 3 W, 4 Y Last check: 0547
> 
> 
> Northbound 27 Sep 18
> 0713 7 F, 2 W, 27 Y Last check: 0551
> 0813 1 F, 2 W, 10 Y Last check: 0557
> 0913 0 F, 4 W, 1 Y Last check: 0559
> 1013 8 F, 1 W, 7 Y Last check: 0601
> 1113 0 F, 8 W, 12 Y Last check: 0603
> 1213 0 F, 3 W, 6 Y Last check: 0604
> 1313 0 F, 0 W, 18 Y Last check: 0606
> 1413 6 F, 3 W, 11 Y Last check: 0624
> 1613 7 F, 7 W, 26 Y Last check: 0627
> 1713 2 F, 3 W, 38 Y Last check: 0631
> 1813 5 F, 3 W, 96 Y Last check: 0635
> 1913 1 F, 0 W, 12 Y Last check: 0638
> 2013 0 F, 5 W, 5 Y Last check: 0641
> 2113 4 F, 3 W, 13 Y Last check: 0642
> 2213 0 F, 1 W, 6 Y Last check: 0644
> 2313 3 F, 2 W, 1 Y Last check: 0645Note: Fares have all been dropped back to $15/$20/$30 on all trains. We will see if there's still an attempt to maximize yield for more crowded trains.


Not to get off topic, but how are you able to post these tables? Is there some hidden tool or something?


----------



## Ryan

It’s not hidden, the code tag switches to a monospace font that is easy to align into tables (it also blocks text in the block from being converted into formatting or the like. It’s used like this:



Code:


[code] Put table stuff here.


* Ordinarily, this would be converted to bold.*

[/CODE]


----------



## cpotisch

Ryan said:


> It’s not hidden, the code tag switches to a monospace font that is easy to align into tables (it also blocks text in the block from being converted into formatting or the like. It’s used like this:
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> Put table stuff here.
> 
> 
> * Ordinarily, this would be converted to bold.*


Thank you muchly.


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## Brian_tampa

2nd quarter ridership and revenue results are out.

https://www.mypalmbeachpost.com/business/brightline-passenger-counts-increase-still-remain-well-below-projections/C2goHqPyH4HZ4OqSoAGATM/

I know Anderson has projected around 40-45k riders for September. It seems Q2 was around 35k per month with limited service to Miami. So it appears his numbers are probably quite accurate, if not a bit on the low side.


----------



## Anderson

So, let's look at my projections/estimates from the other thread:



> "Our ridership increased by 42 percent in the last quarter and revenue increased by 72 percent. We are on the right trajectory."
> 
> That would put ridership at about 106,200 [A] and revenue at $1,142,000 *.*


*Actual ridership came in at 106,090 (I would call that a rounding error on my estimate). Actual revenue came in at $1.54m for Q2, so I was WAY off there...but I think that's a question of interpretation as well. PPR was up 63.5% (and if I stick with my exclusion of the Miami opening weekend, outside of THAT it was up somewhere in the ballpark of 78.5%), so I'm going to guess that the "revenue" figure referred to yield per passenger.*

*I suspect my ridership numbers in June are about right, but I'll need to revise my June revenue estimate. What I developed at the time was as follows:*

* *



> *Looking at the trend (and trying to control for Miami's opening weekend), my guess is that June's numbers are going to look something like this:*
> *-Ridership: 40,000 (annual trend around 485,000)*
> *-Revenue: $500,000 (annual trend around $6,100,000) to $540,000 (annual trend around $6,600,000)*
> *-PPR: $12.50 (assuming a 40% bump per above) to $13.40 (assuming a 50% bump per above).*


*Absent a monthly breakout, my best guess is that ridership was at that level, perhaps a hair lower. Revenue was (necessarily) higher. Full-quarter PPR was $14.52, and adjusting for Miami's opening weekend (as before, excluding 9500 riders and in this case an estimated $100k in revenue) it was $15.84.*

*In light of this, I would estimate $15.00 as the low bar for June (really ignoring Miami's opening weekend and presuming only a modest skew towards the end for revenue) and put $20.00 as the high end (adjusting for Miami's opening weekend and basically presuming that April and the first part of May behaved like Q1). This would give a revenue range from $600,000 to $800,000 (annual trend between $7,200,000 and $9,600,000). These are still both quite far below the needed trend, but they're also a lot better than before. They're also slightly below what I estimated for last Saturday (my estimates there give a PPR of $20.02, but that's also on a day that had ticket sales running "hot" and forced me to estimate a significant amount of high-bucket sales). Put another way, I'm feeling quite comfortable with my estimations from last weekend.*

*Edit: I bumped the high end up a bit after checking some numbers. My estimate, for the record, is that $17.00-17.50 and $680,000-700,000 is probably a "most likely scenario" for June.*


----------



## Anderson

One other thing to break out: Brightline estimated $23.9m in revenue for the year, which would translate into just under $6.0m/quarter. Going to a chart, we get the following for Q1-Q3:



Code:


      Actual   Est.   %
Q1    $0.66m  $5.98m  11.05%
Q2    $1.45m  $5.98m  24.25%
Q3-L  $2.33m  $5.98m  38.96% (estimated)
Q3-M  $2.62m  $5.98m  43.81% (estimated)
Q3-H  $2.91m  $5.98m  48.72% (estimated)
Q3-VH $3.50m  $5.98m  60.28% (estimated)

Q3 is estimated on the basis of ridership of 40,000/month (low), 45,000/month (middle), 50,000/month (high), and 60,000/month (very high) at an average ticket price of $19. NB at these prices, Brightline would need about 102,600 riders in September to be on budget for revenue. With that being said, what (thin) evidence I am seeing shows ridership seeming to continue to rise through the month, so I wouldn't be surprised to see September end up on the higher end of my old projections. I do NOT expect to see it come in near the 60,000 end.


----------



## Brian_tampa

This is the Q2 report filed by Brightline yesterday today.

Check out this link for more information about Brightline

https://emma.msrb.org/IssuerHomePage/Issuer?id=C44A6C3E4A6604C25DDE3C1C5C7FA2E4&type=G

Q2.pdf


----------



## Brian_tampa

Anderson said:


> One other thing to break out: Brightline estimated $23.9m in revenue for the year, which would translate into just under $6.0m/quarter. Going to a chart, we get the following for Q1-Q3:
> 
> Actual Est. %
> Q1 $0.66m $5.98m 11.05%
> Q2 $1.45m $5.98m 24.25%
> Q3-L $2.33m $5.98m 38.96% (estimated)
> Q3-M $2.62m $5.98m 43.81% (estimated)
> Q3-H $2.91m $5.98m 48.72% (estimated)
> Q3-VH $3.50m $5.98m 60.28% (estimated)Q3 is estimated on the basis of ridership of 40,000/month (low), 45,000/month (middle), 50,000/month (high), and 60,000/month (very high) at an average ticket price of $19. NB at these prices, Brightline would need about 102,600 riders in September to be on budget for revenue. With that being said, what (thin) evidence I am seeing shows ridership seeming to continue to rise through the month, so I wouldn't be surprised to see September end up on the higher end of my old projections. I do NOT expect to see it come in near the 60,000 end.


The Brightline estimate is based on full service starting in Q4 of 2017. So I would take any and all revenue and ridership estimates for 2018 with a grain of salt. See page 393 of this PAB document filed last year.

ER1107449-ER866075-ER1266758.pdf


----------



## AGM.12

Is real estate income accounted any where or is that a separate item?


----------



## Brian_tampa

AGM.12 said:


> Is real estate income accounted any where or is that a separate item?


This is just for Brightline revenue from ridership (and maybe stations?). Real estate is a separate LLC. The bonds were sold only for the passenger rail service, specifically the south segment between Miami and WPB. Any real estate revenue might be hard to come by as each building might have a different LLC for its development.


----------



## Anderson

Ah, hell...the paper mangled the numbers. I'll revise my analysis in an hour or two.


----------



## Anderson

Ok, let's take another swing at this now that we have actual numbers in front of us:

Ridership has been indicated at 106,090 (versus the estimate of 106,200). This is basically a rounding error. Revenue was indicated at $1,143,000 (versus the estimate of $1,142,000). This is, in fact, probably an /actual/ rounding error given that it's down to a single count of the base unit of measurement (that is, $1000).

PPR was $10.77 for Q2; my comments earlier of $12.50-13.40 for June hold at this rate, and as a result so do my original notes about revenue trends and so on.

"Other revenue" is interesting. I forget when Brightline started charging for parking, but Brightline is bringing in $3.69/passenger under this column (which presumably includes F&B, both on-board and at-station, as well as parking). Interesting, "cost of sales" did increase, but substantially slower than otherwise.

Am not sure what falls under "miscellaneous income"; best guess is that it includes some stuff like interest on cash balances and the like.

If we eject depreciation/amortization from the calculation (their inclusion is dubious IMO), the net loss goes from $28.34m to $21.82m, a substantial improvement on Q1's (similarly-adjusted) $24.17m. Still not positive but not nearly as bad.

I am wondering how much of those first three line items (salaries/benefits, professional fees, and G&A/other) are/were tied up in construction and what the picture will look like once that isn't nearly as big of a "thing", since for all I can tell "Brightline Trains LLC" covers both PBI-MIA, MCO-PBI, and any putative projects TPA-MCO and/or JAX-PBI.

Edit: Something else which gives me a mild headache: Total expenses given are $27.55m, but restricted cash decreased by $35m while PPI _increased_ by $55m. There was, materially, no change to long-term debt. Members' equity also _increased_ by about $5m in the midst of this. I only took introductory accounting, but I am _really_ getting a headache trying to sort through this and I'd like to brainstorm explanations with somebody if possible.


----------



## Anderson

Code:


Southbound 01 Oct 18
0530  1 F,   0 W,  12 Y  Last check: 0050
0600  3 F,   0 W,  10 Y  Last check: 0056
0700  2 F,   2 W,  47 Y  Last check: 0057
0800  5 F,   5 W,  37 Y  Last check: 0059
0900 13 F,   2 W,   7 Y  Last check: 0104
1000  5 F,   1 W,   9 Y  Last check: 0106
1100  2 F,   0 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0107
1200  4 F,   4 W,  11 Y  Last check: 0109
1400  1 F,   0 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0114
1500  3 F,   0 W,   1 Y  Last check: 0117
1600  2 F,   0 W,   8 Y  Last check: 0126
1700  4 F,   0 W,   9 Y  Last check: 0130
1800  2 F,   3 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0133
1900  0 F,   0 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0135
2000  0 F,   0 W,   1 Y  Last check: 0136
2100  0 F,   0 W,   3 Y  Last check: 0138
     47 F,  17 W, 175 Y

Northbound 01 Oct 18
0713  6 F,   3 W,  22 Y  Last check: 0143
0813  1 F,   3 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0144
0913  0 F,   0 W,   6 Y  Last check: 0145
1013  0 F,   0 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0146
1113  2 F,   0 W,   2 Y  Last check: 0147
1213  3 F,   0 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0148
1313  2 F,   1 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0150
1413  4 F,   0 W,   5 Y  Last check: 0150
1613  4 F,   7 W,  19 Y  Last check: 0152
1713  3 F,   2 W,  27 Y  Last check: 0153
1813  3 F,   1 W,  25 Y  Last check: 0155
1913  2 F,   2 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0156
2013  0 F,   1 W,   2 Y  Last check: 0157
2113  1 F,   2 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0158
2213  1 F,   0 W,   2 Y  Last check: 0159
2313  0 F,   0 W,   0 Y  Last check: 0200
     32 F,  22 W, 137 Y

Note: All trains showing $20/25/40
Also note that this is the first time I've load-checked a Monday.


----------



## Anderson

I'm shunting this over here, but the Virgin Trains US (VTUS) SEC filings basically gave us probable Q3 numbers via giving us Q1-Q3 numbers (since we can back out Q1 and Q2 on already-released data).  Unfortunately, the results are a little hazy:



Code:


Interpretation 1
       Pax Revenue  Total Revenue
Q1     $  663,700   $  768,000
Q2     $1,143,000   $1,540,000
Q3     $2,947,000   $2,925,000
Total  $4,754,000   $5,233,000
	Interpretation 2
       Pax Revenue  Total Revenue
Q1     $  663,700   $  768,000
Q2     $1,143,000   $1,540,000
Q3     $1,835,000** $2,446,000
Total  $3,642,000** $4,754,000

In interpetation 1, "passenger and customer related revenue" is aligned with passenger ticket revenue in the Q1/Q2 statements.  "Total operating revenue" is aligned with ticket revenue plus "other revenue".

In interpretation 2, "passenger and customer related revenue" is aligned with the combined total and "other" is an external revenue category (probably real estate).  In this case, I'm presuming something close to 25% for ancillary revenue (Q2 was 26%, so I think we could go with 25% or 30% as a logical estimate) so that I have *something* to work with.  Thus the pax revenue numbers get a shiny pair of asterisks since I'm having to guess.

In interpretation 1, the numbers don't make sense (ancillary revenue would have to be negative during Q3), so I'm going to go with interpretation 2.  This shows a 60% increase in pax revenue in Q3 (versus Q2).  I'm not sure how I feel about that (I'm probably comfortable-but-not-thrilled since it involves three months with operation to Miami and about six weeks of near-full operation).



Code:


      Actual   Est.   %
Q1    $0.66m  $5.98m  11.05%
Q2    $1.14m  $5.98m  19.06%
Q3    $1.84m  $5.98m  30.77%


As a worthwhile point, this actually suggests that (depending on what assumptions were in play to begin with) Brightline might at least be on track to hit a sustainable revenue level.


----------



## Anderson

Ok, looking at the October numbers, ridership is just over 60,000 while revenue is at $1.0m for the quarter.  I would guess this puts Brightline on track to bring in somewhere between $3.5m and $4.5m for the quarter (depending on the trend and how the holiday interacts with everything).  Were the number to stay stagnant, Q4 ridership would be about 180,000:

Q1: 74,780
Q2: 106,090
Q3: Not yet declared, but probably around 120-140k.
Q4: 180,000 per October.

That'll probably put first-year ridership in the range of 480-550k; it probably also puts Brightline on course for ridership in the range of no less than 800-1,000k next year presuming a shallow slope (and no increase for the rest of Q4...something I can't really take a stab at given the presence of the holidays).

PPR is still looking like a sticky point.  At $12.50/pax in ticket revenue and another $4 in ancillary revenue, ridership would need to be something like 5.4m/yr to cover costs (I'm ignoring depreciation in this calculation), though I would note that I'm _really_ wondering what's buried under G&A and whether those expense lines will drop off once construction wraps on the whole project.


----------



## Brian_tampa

November ridership and revenue numbers are published.

80,660 riders and $1.5M in revenue for November 2018. 

View attachment ER1317273.pdf


----------



## chrsjrcj

Wow. Much higher than October, and it looks like Q4 will exceed Anderson’s estimates. I wonder if they include the Polar Express in the ridership numbers?


----------



## Anderson

I presume they did.  There's no reason to "sandbag" the numbers by excluding them (though to be fair, if disclosure were .  Each Polar Express train is two trainsets together, so you've got 480 riders times six runs per day times five days in November giving a maximum of 14,400 tickets sold.  Only two of those trains list as having sold out, but beyond that I don't know about ridership.  Bearing in mind that there is also the loss of some additional weekend trains to consider, I suspect the impact was no more than 10,000 riders in November.

So, since ridership was around 60,000 for October and 80,000 for November, I'd put quarterly ridership somewhere between 210,000 and 240,000 depending on whether ridership in November was a blip due to the holiday or reflects a trend.  NB that Brightline is now pumping Lyft to link between the stations in Fort Lauderdale and Miami and the relevant airports, so that can't help but help.


----------



## Anderson

Code:


Southbound 08 Dec 18
0800  15 F,  11 W,  86 Y  Last check: 0037 (12/08)
1000  46 F,  30 W, 152 Y  Last check: 0040 (12/08)
1200  38 F,  36 W, 131 Y  Last check: 0057 (12/08)
1400  12 F,  17 W,  77 Y  Last check: 0103 (12/08)
1600  17 F,  33 W,  64 Y  Last check: 0105 (12/08)
1800  15 F,  11 W,  34 Y  Last check: 0107 (12/08)
2000   3 F,   7 W,  18 Y  Last check: 0108 (12/08)
2200  17 F,  11 W,  15 Y  Last check: 0109 (12/08)
     163 F, 156 W, 577 Y
	
Northbound 08 Dec 18
1013  21 F,  17 W,  82 Y  Last check: 0136 (12/08)
1213   7 F,  29 W,  19 Y  Last check: 0140 (12/08)
1413  30 F,  10 W,  27 Y  Last check: 0144 (12/08)
1613  15 F,  24 W,  83 Y  Last check: 0149 (12/08)
1813  22 F,  23 W,  84 Y  Last check: 0154 (12/08)
2028  11 F,  22 W,  90 Y  Last check: 0157 (12/08)
2213  11 F,  26 W,  61 Y  Last check: 0201 (12/08)
2343  14 F,   7 W,  46 Y  Last check: 0203 (12/08)
     131 F, 158 W, 492 Y


Notes:
-I couldn't generate a seat assignment on the 1000 SB train in Y.  Given the fact that W and F were almost sold out, my guess is that Y is sold out aiside from a wheelchair space.
-Ditto W on the 1200.
-Several trains seem to have 40 seats given over to W instead of 32 (the second set of tables in the middle of the car is switched over).
-As a direct comparison vs September, a similar-time load check provided the following:



Code:


22 Sep 18     114 F, 115 W, 363 Y
08 Dec 18    163 F, 156 W, 577 Y

22 Sep 18     104 F, 120 W, 391 Y
08 Dec 18    131 F, 158 W, 492 Y


Southbound ridership is up a bit over 50% vs. September.  Northbound ridership is up 27%, quite the disparity.  I would also note that I am seeing slightly more aggressive load pricing for Y now (Y's lowest bucket has been bumped to $17 for the full trip, up from $15 (and $10 before that); the highest bucket appears to be $35), though F seems to be mostly unchanged.


----------



## Anderson

Code:


      Ridership    Ticket Revenue    PPR    Ancillary Revenue
18Q1     74,780   $  664,000    $ 8.80    $  104,000 ($1.39)
18Q2    106,090   $1,143,000    $10.77    $  392,000 ($3.69)
18Q3    159,586   $2,296,000    $14.39    $  634,000 ($3.97)
===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====
18Q4-A  200,000   $3,000,000    $15.00    $  800,000 ($4.00)
18Q4-B  220,000   $3,630,000    $16.50    $  880,000 ($4.00)
18Q4-C  220,000   $3,960,000    $18.00    $  880,000 ($4.00)
18Q4-D  220,000   $4,290,000    $19.50    $  880,000 ($4.00)
18Q4-E  240,000   $4,320,000    $18.00    $  960,000 ($4.00)
18Q4-F  240,000   $4,800,000    $20.00    $  960,000 ($4.00)


Projection A presumes that December "returns to form" and that November was a deviation with its ridership growth.  It also makes a low estimate on PPR (barely above Q3).

Projection B presumes that December follows in the footsteps of November and presumes an additional 10% increase in PPR.  C and D use additional bumps in PPR of 20% and 30%.

Projections E and F presume that ridership in December grows again.  They also post PPR growth (20% and about 35%, respectively).

My personal guess is D.  Christmas is going to play hell with the timetables but the Polar Express trains are going to help offset that with a solid slug of "premium" revenue.  I'm hard-pressed to see them adding another 20k pax month-over-month in that context.



Code:


Actual Ticket Revenue vs Estimates
      Actual   Est.   %
Q1    $0.66m  $5.98m  11.05%
Q2    $1.14m  $5.98m  19.06%
Q3    $2.29m  $5.98m  38.29%
Q4-Low$3.00m  $5.98m  50.17%
Q4-Hi $4.80m  $5.98m  80.27%


----------



## Anderson

Code:


Southbound 10 Jan 19
0500  0 F,  0 W,  13 Y  Last check: 0423/0447
0600  2 F,  1 W,  21 Y  Last check: 0426
0630  2 F,  2 W,  29 Y  Last check: 0428
0700  3 F,  3 W,  48 Y  Last check: 0430
0730  5 F,  6 W,  31 Y  Last check: 0431
0830  8 F,  3 W,  40 Y  Last check: 0433
0930  7 F,  7 W,  24 Y  Last check: 0435
1030  4 F,  1 W,  22 Y  Last check: 0436
1130  7 F, 11 W,  15 Y  Last check: 0438
1330  8 F,  0 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0439
1430  3 F,  3 W,  22 Y  Last check: 0441
1530  4 F, 14 W,  17 Y  Last check: 0442
1630 32 F, 32 W,  98 Y  Last check: 0444
1730 25 F, 24 W,  56 Y  Last check: 0446
1830  2 F,  0 W,  11 Y  Last check: 0448
1930  2 F,  1 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0450
2130  5 F,  4 W,   2 Y  Last check: 0451
    119 F, 112 W, 457 Y
	Northbound 10 Jan 19
0640  3 F,  0 W,  22 Y  Last check: 0456
0740  2 F,  4 W,  29 Y  Last check: 0458
0840  3 F,  5 W,   9 Y  Last check: 0500
0940  4 F,  5 W,  15 Y  Last check: 0501
1040  5 F,  0 W,  20 Y  Last check: 0502
1140  7 F,  5 W,   6 Y  Last check: 0503
1240  2 F,  6 W,   7 Y  Last check: 0506
1340  2 F,  2 W,   8 Y  Last check: 0507
1540  8 F,  7 W,  41 Y  Last check: 0509
1640  8 F,  5 W,  33 Y  Last check: 0510
1710  3 F,  0 W,  24 Y  Last check: 0512
1740  5 F,  5 W,  24 Y  Last check: 0513
1840  0 F,  2 W,  23 Y  Last check: 0515
1940  0 F,  0 W,   6 Y  Last check: 0516
2040  3 F,  1 W,   4 Y  Last check: 0518
2210 12 F, 27 W, 114 Y  Last check: 0520
2310 11 F,  2 W,  65 Y  Last check: 0522
     78 F, 76 W, 450 Y

NB The southbound 1630 train shows no option to choose SmartPlus.  Based on the rest of the train's ridership data, I suspect it is simply sold out.

Also note that there is a Miami Heat game at 1900 tonight (the 1730 train will get you to Miami before the game, but it's a little tight; the 1630 train is probably a safer bet and allows for grabbing a bite before the game).  Going by a 2:15 game length, the game should wrap around 2115...so the 2210 train is probably a safe bet for returning home, with some folks clearly opting for the later train "just to be safe" and/or to grab a drink or two after the game.  Likewise, I have little doubt that some folks are "winging it" on their return ticket.


----------



## Anderson

Another point unrelated to the above: Looking at Brightline's ancillary revenue projections, loosely that comes to about $15-16m/yr plus about $6.50/passenger.  This isn't a _perfect_ fit (that fixed income per year amount declines slightly in the first few years before slowly rising thereafter...the latter trend making sense as an inflation-adjusted item) but it's "close enough".

Now, whether that $15-16m is supposed to be from rental income, Tri-Rail access fees, both, or some mix of those and something else is anybody's guess.

Edit: A further observation that should be noted: In Q3, the growth of ancillary revenue on a per-passenger basis slowed substantially.  This happened alongside the introduction of SmartPlus, and I do not think that is an accident.  SmartPlus generally adds $5 to the ticket price but also effectively moves the F&B revenue for those pax from an on-board transaction to a ticket purchase transaction.  Going by the above numbers for today and taking them as representative, SmartPlus currently accounts for 16.3% of southbound pax and 12.6% of northbound pax...so you're theoretically moving $0.63-0.81 per passenger from ancillary revenue to ticket revenue.  Obviously, I don't think this is quite an accurate depiction since that pre-purchase will affect consumer behavior in various ways and it doesn't account for pax who don't get the drink/snack, but I think you could make a solid case for somewhere in the ballpark of 1/4-1/2 of that being "shifted" while the rest is induced revenue (albeit with some COGS that would normally be applied to ancillary revenue thrown in).  Note that some of the induced revenue is not just from encouraging folks to pay an extra $5 up front, it is also from the OBS being able to cover more pax because up to 32 (and I think sometimes 40; I think there have probably been a few trains where they've converted an additional pair of tables to SmartPlus) have paid in advance and thus don't require running credit cards.

Another edit, for further analysis on overall ridership trends:

As a note, I was able to run a very similar load check on 25 September between 0400 and 0500.  Total SB load at that point was 45 F, 23 W, 259 Y; NB load was 49 F, 22 W, 258 Y.

A back-of-the-envelope adjustment for traffic to/from the Heat game pulls about 40 F, 40 W, and 140 Y pax out of the mix SB and 20 F, 25 W, and 160 Y out NB.  Note that I am very much more comfortable with the NB estimates as things stand (there are only two relevant trains and traffic has tended to be thin at that hour) than with the SB trains (which potentially include reverse-commute traffic).

Not recalling when the accident was that damaged that car, however, it seems that the "large block of sold-out seats" on two of the trains that day may have been due to the car being damaged (with the train doing a round-trip) rather than "actual" seat sales.



Code:


Southbound
25 Sep 18 Unadjusted    45 F,  23 W,  259 Y
10 Jan 19 Unadjusted   119 F, 112 W,  457 Y
10 Jan 19 Adjustments  -40 F, -40 W, -140 Y
10 Jan 19 Adjusted      79 F,  72 W,  317 Y
Northbound
25 Sep 18 Unadjusted    49 F,  22 W,  258 Y
10 Jan 19 Unadjusted    78 F,  76 W,  450 Y
10 Jan 19 Adjustments  -20 F, -25 W, -160 Y
10 Jan 19 Adjusted      58 F,  51 W,  290 Y

Net of the Heat game, overall ridership seems to be up by about 43% southbound and 21% northbound over the last few months.  I'd need more data to definitively peg various effects and changes, however.


----------



## Swadian Hardcore

Thanks for keeping track. This is interesting.


----------



## Brian_tampa

December ridership and revenue report out yesterday. Almost 240k riders for Q4 2018.

December 2018 Ridership and Revenue Results 
 
For the month ended December 31, 2018, we carried a total of 98,076 passengers and generated total 
revenue of approximately $2.2 million. 
Brightline continued to demonstrate a strong increase in ridership and revenue during December. 
Ridership increased 22% over November as a result of growth across all customer segments as well as 
ridership on holiday season event trains. Excluding holiday season event trains in November and 
December, ridership increased approximately five percent month over month. Total revenue increased 
47% over November due to ridership growth as well as growth in ancillary revenue. 
Brightline is proud to have served south Florida with over 579 thousand rides in 2018 and we are grateful 
for the enthusiastic support from guests during our first year of service.


----------



## Anderson

[email protected]_tampa[/USER] Could we get a link to the source for that?

As to the numbers, here's what we have:
October: 60,013 riders, $1.0m revenue
November: 80,660 riders, $1.5m revenue
December: 98,076 riders, $2.2m revenue

Total: 238,749 riders, $4.7m revenue

I can't speak to exact details, but it feels as though we ended up with option "C" being the closest to the mark.  The situation with weekend ridership will be interesting to see going into January...Brightline cites "seasonal event trains" as part of the growth, but invariably some of that came at the expense of weekend ridership due to equipment requirements, so things are a bit funky there.  Noting that there were "normal" operations for the first weekend-and-a-half of November, the adjustment to a 5% rise in ridership probably"actually" translates into about 6%.

Unfortunately, Brightline redid their website this week, and I'm still getting used to running load checks on the new site.


----------



## Brian_tampa

Anderson,

Here is the source webpage for all of the financial disclosures that are required for the PAB's sold last year.

https://emma.msrb.org/IssuerHomePage/Issuer?id=C44A6C3E4A6604C25DDE3C1C5C7FA2E4&amp;type=G


----------



## Anderson

[email protected]_tampa[/USER] I've seen that stuff before.  What I was hoping for was a link to the December release.


----------



## Brian_tampa

If you are using the link I sent previously, click on the accept button then click on the financial disclosures tab for the Brightline bond issue. There you will find all of the financial and construction update documents since the PAB's were issued. If want the specific link to the pdf document for Q4 financials here it is:

Edit: this is the pdf link

https://emma.msrb.org/ES1233106-ES963090-ES1363983.pdf


----------



## chrsjrcj

January Ridership/Revenue totals:



> For the month ended January 31, 2019, we carried a total of 73,568 passengers and generated total revenue of approximately $1.7 million. During the month, Virgin Trains continued to experience monthover-month growth in ridership excluding the impact of December’s high number of holiday event-related trips, while also achieving growth in average paid fares as we continue to ramp up both ridership and effective pricing. We expect current trends to drive strong ridership and revenue growth in the year ahead.


https://emma.msrb.org/ES1244061-ES972359-ES1373364.pdf


----------



## Anderson

Just noodling this:
-I'm not surprised about the shuffle in ridership, but I _am_ a little bit surprised that the "holiday specials" accounted for 25k riders.
-Going from October, the ridership increase is 22% over three months (or a rate of increase of about 5% per month per month).
-Particularly interesting: PPR appears to be up in January vs. December ($23.11 vs $22.43).  Some of this may be down to only having two significant figures on the revenue side, but it still seems to be an increase.
--The trend here is particularly pronounced vs. October.  The rate of increase is about 8.5% per month per month.

And of course, I'm wondering when the food court, etc. will be done at MiamiCentral.


----------



## Anderson

Monthly Ridership Tracking


Code:


      2018    2019   2020
Jan  17,783  73,568
Feb  24,098  78,707
Mar  32,899
Apr  ??????
May  ??????
Jun  ??????
Jul         
Aug         
Sep         
Oct  60,013
Nov  80,660
Dec  98,076


Average daily ridership


Code:


      2018    2019   2020
Jan   935.9  2373.2
Feb   860.6  2811.0
Mar  1061.3  
Apr  
May  
Jun  
Jul  
Aug  
Sep  
Oct  1935.9
Nov  2688.7
Dec  3163.7


I can't find monthly numbers for April-September of last year. Once we get March's data (probably in 2-3 weeks), I'll try to check out another quarter's data. For a quick note, February 2019 is not really comparable to February 2018 (Miami wasn't in the mix yet in 2018 and service was a lot thinner). However, I would compare it to October 2018 and note that the trend is strong there.

I'm going to take a stab for now, however, at Q1 2019:

18Q1: 74,780
18Q2: 106,090
18Q3: 159,568
18Q4: 238,749

19Q1: 239,416

A low case would drop the numbers back to where they were in January or keep them in line with February. The former seems highly unlikely and the latter somewhat unlikely. I think a moderate case would keep them flat vis-a-vis February's daily rate (2811/day) and that gives 87,141 riders. A high case would go up by another 10% (3092/day) and give 95,855 riders. I'm going with the middle case above (February feels slightly ahead of trend) but I think I may overshoot slightly. I'd put the number somewhere around 84,000 (in line with the monthly rate increase of 7% that held October-January). This puts this quarter's ridership roughly at the same level as last quarter's ridership (give or take), but without the Christmas trains driving a spike.

A brief note on the dangers of trend extrapolation: Were the 7% trend to hold indefinitely, we would exceed capacity next summer. That trend line probably cannot hold beyond the end of this year (if it even holds that long), but it seems useful for now.


----------



## cbustrains

The Miami Herald had an interesting article with some good tidbits of information on Brightline (albeit with some pieces of poor math and misunderstanding):
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article227318879.html

A few interesting notes:

March 2019 ridership was 90,000 (no revenues mentioned)
Brightline will promote its rebranding to Virgin tomorrow (Thursday)
Expansion to Jacksonville was mentioned; I know this plan has been mentioned in this forum recently but I have not read those plans in any recent news articles and I found it notably absent from the IPO prospectus
One bondholder, Nuveen Asset Management, owns $505MM of the $600MM outstanding issued bonds
The March 21st bond prospectus reportedly discussed three possible scenarios for Brightline:

2.1MM riders in 2019 at $25 per rider, losing $15MM in 2019 but earning $49MM in 2020.
2.1MM riders in 2019 at $16 per rider, losing $34MM in 2019 but earning $5MM in 2020.
1.4MM riders in 2019 at $25 per rider, losing $36MM in 2019 but earning $5MM in 2020.
Given Q1 is around 240,000 riders, I would think hitting even the third scenario would be very optimistic. It would be interesting if Brightline were to even entertain lowering prices congruent with their second scenario.


----------



## Anderson

Let's plug 90k riders in March into the above figures. That gives us 2903 pax/day. That is a bit above the 7% trendline that I identified earlier. 1.4m would, in fact, be reasonably "on trend" with that (a quick tally gives 1.29-1.31m riders on that trend).

The site is not letting me upload the Excel file I generated, but I checked trend-lines for each rate of increase in average daily ridership, dating from October. 2903 is very close to the 8.5% trend-line of 2910.93. We've spent four of the last five months above the trend but I cannot do _that_ much with November and December because of the Christmas trains.

If I were to revise to an 8% trendline, that would place ridership for the year at 1.41m. Revised to an 8.5% trendline you get 1.47m. So the 1.4m projection isn't unrealistic given ridership trends as of late.

Edit: Also, reading the Miami Herald article, those numbers are in line with my observations (including the higher ridership on the SB mid-morning train than the earlier NB train). However, it should be noted that they went with a reverse-flow train off-peak out of Miami. They literally picked the _worst_ NB train before mid-afternoon (and arguably those trains are a bit better than my observations allowed for in January since I was stuck with overnight-only data records). For the record, I don't think this is bad reporting...it is just an unfortunate choice of train. If they had gone with either of the earlier train pairs, they would have found substantially more pax in both directions. They drew a train out of a hat and I could have told them what they would find.


----------



## cbustrains

Interesting, good insight Anderson. I've been thinking more in terms of additive increases rather than percentage increases; as ridership numbers go up, I would imagine the 7%-8.5% percentage growth would eventually become unsustainable. However, as you've indicated, the percentage growth trendline is still holding which is a good sign.

You noted one of my qualms with the article with the reporter going on reverse-flow trains at off peak times. My other two qualms with the article were around their analysis that January and February ridership fell below the adjusted November and December ridership results (I think they did not know that the Polar Express train also accounted for ridership in November as well) and then also on the reporter's analysis of driving versus taking the train-- the reporter mentioned the costs of parking to take the train but oddly failed to acknowledge the cost of parking when driving. Overall-- as the title implied-- the reporter seemed to have a bit of a bias in writing this article. Thankfully, the promising bond news and rebranding information today will offset the negative news articles.


----------



## cbustrains

April 2019 results are out and they don't look pretty:

"For the month ended April 30, 2019, we carried 71,308 passengers and generated total revenue of approximately $1.8 million. Daily trips by commuters and frequent business travelers continued to grow in the month of April, while leisure-oriented ridership was lower due to lower seasonal event activity. In addition, we ran a reduced train schedule to allow for installation of signaling system upgrades associated with federally-mandated positive train control."

https://emma.msrb.org/ES1269861-ES993909-ES1395346.pdf

Does anyone have an idea of how much of a reduced train schedule occurred in April?

It seems that Virgin Trains USA is consistently releasing the monthly reports around the 18-20th of the following month. They also released a Construction Report stating that construction has commenced on the North Segment (West Palm Beach to Orlando) and will begin revenue service on that line in "approximately three years."


----------



## chrsjrcj

I honestly can say I’m not surprised. They started running a couple flash sales during April, and I even received a sales pitch for considerable discounts on their commuter passes. 

They ran another flash sale today for up to 55% off in Smart for travel later this week. 

As far as the reduced schedule, I seem to remember a Sunday or two where trains didn’t run all the way to Miami due to PTC installation. 

I suspect May will rebound because of the $5 tickets this past weekend. There were a few sold out trains according to the booking site. Of course, that doesn’t look good from a revenue perspective, but I suppose they’re trying to get butts in the seats to sell them on the product first.


----------



## Anderson

Updated monthly ridership data:


Code:


      2018    2019   2020
Jan  17,783  73,568
Feb  24,098  78,707
Mar  32,899  91,903
Apr  ??????  71,308
May  ??????  85,740
Jun  ??????
Jul        
Aug        
Sep        
Oct  60,013
Nov  80,660
Dec  98,076




Code:


Revenue:
     2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun         
Jul         
Aug         
Sep         
Oct  $1.0m   
Nov  $1.5m   
Dec  $2.2m


----------



## Anderson

Code:


      2018    2019   2020
Jan  17,783  73,568
Feb  24,098  78,707
Mar  32,899  91,903
Apr  ??????  71,308
May  ??????  85,740
Jun  ??????  80,094
Jul       
Aug       
Sep       
Oct  60,013
Nov  80,660
Dec  98,076
Revenue:
     2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun          $1.6m
Jul         
Aug         
Sep         
Oct  $1.0m   
Nov  $1.5m   
Dec  $2.2m


----------



## neroden

Sooooo, the thing is, running a system like this is mostly fixed costs. The line as it is, by itself, is never going to break even. Going to Orlando should more-than-double revenue, while much-less-than-doubling costs. The same will happen when they go to Tampa.

Railroads of the 19th century expanded as fast as they possibly could for this reason. This also explains the merger mania tendency in railroads. Brightline's situation is no exception. Here's hoping they get to Tampa before they run out of funding. Then we can see how viable they are.


----------



## Trogdor

neroden said:


> Railroads of the 19th century expanded as fast as they possibly could for this reason.



Railroads of the 19th century expanded as fast as they could because they were chasing government grants, an essentially non-existent market, and were defrauding lots of investors. Many of them ultimately went bankrupt.


----------



## Anderson

I think the answer is both. You had a lot of reckless expansion early on chasing government grants and charters...but scale advantages drove the various waves of mergers (and are part of why you saw "domino effect" waves of mergers where one tie-up would trigger several more).


----------



## neroden

There weren't any government grants for the Northeastern railroads -- they still all expanded and merged as fast as possible. They also were big on through traffic, connections, and "codesharing". Economies of scale were the only way to survive, and this was understood quite early.


----------



## Anderson

No, but there were definitely cases of subsidies and support for charters and the like. At least some mergers were, IIRC, driven by railroads trying to patch together the right to X miles of track for a given project.


----------



## Anderson

Updated for July data:


Code:


      2018    2019   2020
Jan  17,783  73,568
Feb  24,098  78,707
Mar  32,899  91,903
Apr  34,615  71,308
May  56,781  85,740
Jun  48,619  80,094
Jul  52,162  83,741  
Aug      
Sep      
Oct  60,013
Nov  80,660
Dec  98,076

NB: April/May 2018 ridership derived from April/May 2019 ridership adjusted for growth. The monthly totals do not quite line up with the YTD numbers for 2018 and I do not see any way to reconcile the discrepancy.


Code:


Revenue:
     2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m  
Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m  
Aug      
Sep      
Oct  $1.0m
Nov  $1.5m
Dec  $2.2m


----------



## Anderson

Code:


     2018    2019   2020
Jan  17,783  73,568
Feb  24,098  78,707
Mar  32,899  91,903
Apr  34,615  71,308
May  56,781  85,740
Jun  48,619  80,094
Jul  52,162  83,741
Aug  54,574  74,312
Sep    
Oct  60,013
Nov  80,660
Dec  98,076




Code:


Revenue:
    2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m
Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m
Aug  $0.9m   $1.5m 
Sep    
Oct  $1.0m
Nov  $1.5m
Dec  $2.2m


----------



## neroden

Perfectly respectable numbers, but they'll need more economies of scale to break even. Bring on Orlando.


----------



## chrsjrcj

I think they may fall just short of hitting 1 million riders this year.

You can see why they are rushing to add 3 additional stations to the current route.


----------



## Anderson

By "three stations"...I know there's Boca Raton, Aventura (I think)...and did they actually announce Fort Lauderdale Airport?

YTD they're averaging just over 79,900/month (or just over 2650/day if you go that way), putting them "on pace" to finish with about 960-970k (depending on if you go by "share of months elapsed" or "share of days elapsed"). FWIW, I would put the even-money point for them at one million: They probably lost around 5-10k riders over the hurricane (September will probably end up somewhere in the high 60s or low 70s) but based on last year, December is probably good for an extra 20k and November for an extra 5k.

(It also isn't quite clear how they handle riders on the Polar Express-ish trains in terms of headcount...or, for that matter, whether the month/year ends with 2359 on New Years' Eve or whether those late-night extras get handled as part of the "operational day" of 12/31 vs 01/01.)


----------



## chrsjrcj

PortMiami is the 3rd station. I had to look it up, because I too forgot what the 3rd one even was.


----------



## jis

Port Miami will only be for cruise related service. Hourly service there seems both impractical and unnecessary.


----------



## Anderson

PortMiami will likely be basically a "charter" service in conjunction with cruises. However, I feel like they're probably one set short of being able to really do that comfortably.


----------



## Anderson

September has been posted:
https://emma.msrb.org/ES1314134-ES1026580-ES1428550.pdf




Code:


     2018    2019   2020
Jan  17,783  73,568
Feb  24,098  78,707
Mar  32,899  91,903
Apr  34,615  71,308
May  56,781  85,740
Jun  48,619  80,094
Jul  52,162  83,741
Aug  54,574  74,312
Sep  52,850  61,688
Oct  60,013
Nov  80,660
Dec  98,076





Code:


    2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m
Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m
Aug  $0.9m   $1.5m 
Sep  $1.0m   $1.1m
Oct  $1.0m
Nov  $1.5m
Dec  $2.2m


----------



## neroden

20% YOY growth is respectable. Still need Orlando, and possibly Tampa, to cover fixed costs.


----------



## Anderson

https://emma.msrb.org/ER1272506-ER993327-ER1396165.pdf


Code:


     2018    2019   2020
Jan  17,783  73,568
Feb  24,098  78,707
Mar  32,899  91,903
Apr  34,615  71,308
May  56,781  85,740
Jun  48,619  80,094
Jul  52,162  83,741
Aug  54,574  74,312
Sep  52,850  61,688
Oct  60,013  83,426
Nov  80,660
Dec  98,076




Code:


    2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m
Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m
Aug  $0.9m   $1.5m 
Sep  $1.0m   $1.1m
Oct  $1.0m   $1.7m
Nov  $1.5m
Dec  $2.2m


----------



## Brian_tampa

Anderson said:


> https://emma.msrb.org/ER1272506-ER993327-ER1396165.pdf
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> 2018    2019   2020
> Jan  17,783  73,568
> Feb  24,098  78,707
> Mar  32,899  91,903
> Apr  34,615  71,308
> May  56,781  85,740
> Jun  48,619  80,094
> Jul  52,162  83,741
> Aug  54,574  74,312
> Sep  52,850  61,688
> Oct  60,013  83,426
> Nov  80,660
> Dec  98,076
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Code:
> 
> 
> 2018    2019    2020
> Jan          $1.7m
> Feb          $1.9m
> Mar          $2.3m
> Apr          $1.8m
> May          $1.7m
> Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m
> Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m
> Aug  $0.9m   $1.5m
> Sep  $1.0m   $1.1m
> Oct  $1.0m   $1.7m
> Nov  $1.5m
> Dec  $2.2m


There definitely seems to be a repeating pattern here. Late summer/early fall drop in ridership two years in a row. I wonder if the very good Oct '19 numbers portend even better numbers for Nov and Dec?


----------



## Anderson

I have several thoughts here:
(1) September is the "slow season" for Florida: It isn't summertime (with families traveling) and it isn't winter (with snowbirds).
(2) 2019 had an explicit disruption due to weather around Labor Day.
(3) On the other hand, I forget when hourly service was instituted last year (I know it was in place by mid-September but I forget if it was in mid-August or a little later), but the staggered service increases across much of last year do complicate comparisons.

Looking to the end of CY19, I think we're going to end up at around $16.5m in ticket revenue and $5.0m in ancillary revenue (so about $21.5m overall). Ridership should end up pretty close to 1,000,000: Though I think it's going to fall a hair shy, we seem to be holding at around 20,000 pax/month more than last year (aside from September, where they anticipate that 11k riders were lost due to Dorian) which could put us _just_ over the line. To my mind, the bigger question is whether ridership in January holds to such an uptrend. On that, my best guess would be that YOY ridership will bump by about 10-15k/month...but we still don't have a good trend cycle to point to here.


----------



## Anderson

https://emma.msrb.org/ES1333216-ES1040101-ES1443376.pdf


Code:


     2018     2019    2020
Jan  17,783   73,568 
Feb  24,098   78,707
Mar  32,899   91,903
Apr  34,615   71,308
May  56,781   85,740
Jun  48,619   80,094
Jul  52,162   83,741
Aug  54,574   74,312
Sep  52,850   61,688
Oct  60,013   83,426
Nov  80,660  100,627
Dec  98,076

Note that Brightline crossed 100k pax for the first time in November. A trend of an increase of 20k riders/month seems to be holding. YTD ridership is 885,114. I'd give them a 40% chance of making it to one million riders in CY19.



Code:


    2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m
Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m
Aug  $0.9m   $1.5m 
Sep  $1.0m   $1.1m
Oct  $1.0m   $1.7m
Nov  $1.5m   $2.2m
Dec  $2.2m

Again, overall revenue is looking strong. Average fares are up by about 20% per the monthly report and overall revenue is up 50% or so YOY. YTD revenue is $19.2m. Overall revenue looks likely to settle at about $22m.


----------



## Anderson

Just posting this as a thought, but I decided to check Brightline's numbers for the equivalent to Amtrak's FY19. Ridership for FY19 would be 939,810. It takes a little bit of work to sort out the other three months (Oct-Dec 2018), but ticket revenue for the nine months ended in September is indicated as $12.0m. For November 2018, it was $1.2m and for October 2018 it was $0.8m. I do not have December...but as October and November showed ticket revenue at about 80% of overall revenue (or put a different way, ancillary revenue is about 20% of the total), I'm comfortable putting $1.8m in as a placeholder (which is, incidentally, how the figures broke down for November 2019). That would give a total revenue of $15.8m for the period, probably +/- $0.1m.

The closest analogue in the Amtrak system would be the Hiawathas, though the Capitol Corridor and the Surfliners are also not utterly dissimilar (ditto the Springfield Shuttles, Downeaster, and NYP-ALB). When completed, the run to Orlando will probably look most like either the Surfliner or the Capitol Corridor in terms of distance and frequency.

I am partially noting this because I will likely, in the next few years, be adding a new page to my ridership/revenue data sets for non-Amtrak intercity operators and I want to keep an eye on the relevant data trail. Right now, non-Amtrak intercity ridership is about 2.8% of the total, but Brightline made up somewhere in the ballpark of 35% of the growth in intercity rail ridership in FY19.

I would also suspect that Brightline probably gave non-Amtrak intercity ridership its highest year in the US this side of the mid-70s, though I wouldn't be shocked if in '71 or '72 the four Amtrak holdouts could have scraped together the better part of a million riders (particularly since Southern was still running three daily trains plus a 3x/week run at the time). My guess is that about 65-70% of the ridership would have been Southern, with the Rio Grande and Rock Island splitting the remainder (the Rock Island was running two daily trains while the Rio Grande was running one 3x/week train...but it was quite popular with tourists) and the remaining operation in Georgia only picking up a few stray hundred a year based on anecdotal evidence. Brightline still probably beats the batch of them, however.

(As an observational aside, if Brightline, Texas Central, and the Vegas operation all get going to a full build-out there's every chance that private intercity train counts will quickly surpass where they were in 1971. As another aside, I've now blundered into a BTS file giving Amtrak's monthly ridership from 1991 to present, albeit with no breakdown by route or anything...)


----------



## neroden

If you're doing retro intercity calculations for 1971-1975, I'll remind you that the South Shore Line was considered intercity in 1971, and quite likely had higher ridership than the Rio Grande or the Rock Island, perhaps higher than the Southern, certainly higher than the Central of Georgia. The South Shore continued in fully private, unsubsidized operations through 1975, before getting state subsidy in 1977. 

There were *six* railroads eligible to join Amtrak which didn't join Amtrak; the sixth was the Reading, with its Philadelphia-Newark service (the Crusader), which continued running through Reading's bankruptcy. I'm not sure when the start of SEPTA sponsorship was, but they also kept running to Bethlehem and Allenton and to Pottsville and Reading, which are definitely intercity services by any reasonable definition. Of course, this went into public ownership with Conrail and the 4R Act in 1976, and service ended in 1982.

The "intercity"/"commuter" distinction is pretty arbitrary, and Virgin Trains USA is currently running at the outer edge of commuter-distance operations, with a route shorter than the Port Jervis Line or the circuitous North Jersey Coast Line, and a bit longer than Metra's UP-NW line or the South Shore Line.

There's some difficulty creating apples-to-apples comparisons as a result. It'll be more clearly intercity once it gets to Orlando. It'll be a wildly different market from Miami-WPB, and it should be interesting to see what happens to the ridership numbers.


----------



## Brian_tampa

Dec 2019 ridership/revenue report is out (and construction report):

127,690 ridership for Dec and 1,012,804 for the year 2019


----------



## Anderson

Code:


     2018     2019    2020
Jan  17,783   73,568 
Feb  24,098   78,707
Mar  32,899   91,903
Apr  34,615   71,308
May  56,781   85,740
Jun  48,619   80,094
Jul  52,162   83,741
Aug  54,574   74,312
Sep  52,850   61,688
Oct  60,013   83,426
Nov  80,660  100,627
Dec  98,076  127,690




Code:


    2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m
Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m
Aug  $0.9m   $1.5m 
Sep  $1.0m   $1.1m
Oct  $1.0m   $1.7m
Nov  $1.5m   $2.2m
Dec  $2.2m   $2.9m
            $22.1m


----------



## Anderson

Some thoughts:
-The only period we have comparable numbers has been showing about a 25-30% increase in ridership and a similar increase in overall revenue. August was higher and September lower, but IIRC full hourly service didn't begin until August 2018 and September 2019 was fouled by Dorian. For want of anything else to work with, I would presume that this continues for at least Q1-Q3 of 2020.
-A 30% increase over January 2019 would yield ridership of about 95k. A reduction from December to January in line with 2018/2019 would yield about 94k. I'm comfortable with that as a January projection.
-Likewise, I would be comfortable with a projection of 1.3m for ridership for 2020. There are, of course, significant error bars: The increase in ridership could trail off, and there's an open question as to how much demand can be accommodate in the peak hours/how time-flexible peak-hour travelers are.
--On the plus side, adding Boca Raton and Aventura in Q4 of 2020 would probably boost ridership significantly (they would, for example, increase the number of station pairs in play from 3 to 10). I don't necessarily buy the additional 2m pax/yr at this stage, but after a year or so I could see them adding a million quite easily. I'd presume that for every month that both are operational, you can add another 25-30k riders. I think that adding more becomes tricky.
--On the minus side, Tri-Rail access to Miami Central could act as a drag on ridership (as folks heading for Miami simply switch to Tri-Rail for the lower cost and higher number of station options). This comes with an asterisk, since that Tri-Rail service will also likely act as a significant booster for revenue for the operation (both via increased footfall and via access fees).

I do think that Brightline is going to slam into capacity drag on ridership somewhere south of or approaching 200k riders/month right now. As of this moment, they have 248 seats per train. In theory, that's 8,432 seats per day aside from Sundays* (248 seats*17 round trips*2 runs per round trip), and there both is and will be turnover in the seats at intermediate stations. However, relative demand is such that I don't see any way that you're filling the last train of the evening to capacity (for example), and midday demand is going to vary a bit as well. That puts about a quarter million seats available, multiplied by any expected seat turnover and whatever you think load factors can realistically be. If/when they add cars (or trains), that'll change, but until then that feels like the ceiling.

*Saturday hovers around 16 round-trips, usually with one spilling into nominal Sunday morning; Sunday sits around 12.


----------



## NES28

Anderson said:


> Some thoughts:
> -The only period we have comparable numbers has been showing about a 25-30% increase in ridership and a similar increase in overall revenue. August was higher and September lower, but IIRC full hourly service didn't begin until August 2018 and September 2019 was fouled by Dorian. For want of anything else to work with, I would presume that this continues for at least Q1-Q3 of 2020.
> -A 30% increase over January 2019 would yield ridership of about 95k. A reduction from December to January in line with 2018/2019 would yield about 94k. I'm comfortable with that as a January projection.
> -Likewise, I would be comfortable with a projection of 1.3m for ridership for 2020. There are, of course, significant error bars: The increase in ridership could trail off, and there's an open question as to how much demand can be accommodate in the peak hours/how time-flexible peak-hour travelers are.
> --On the plus side, adding Boca Raton and Aventura in Q4 of 2020 would probably boost ridership significantly (they would, for example, increase the number of station pairs in play from 3 to 10). I don't necessarily buy the additional 2m pax/yr at this stage, but after a year or so I could see them adding a million quite easily. I'd presume that for every month that both are operational, you can add another 25-30k riders. I think that adding more becomes tricky.
> --On the minus side, Tri-Rail access to Miami Central could act as a drag on ridership (as folks heading for Miami simply switch to Tri-Rail for the lower cost and higher number of station options). This comes with an asterisk, since that Tri-Rail service will also likely act as a significant booster for revenue for the operation (both via increased footfall and via access fees).
> 
> I do think that Brightline is going to slam into capacity drag on ridership somewhere south of or approaching 200k riders/month right now. As of this moment, they have 248 seats per train. In theory, that's 8,432 seats per day aside from Sundays* (248 seats*17 round trips*2 runs per round trip), and there both is and will be turnover in the seats at intermediate stations. However, relative demand is such that I don't see any way that you're filling the last train of the evening to capacity (for example), and midday demand is going to vary a bit as well. That puts about a quarter million seats available, multiplied by any expected seat turnover and whatever you think load factors can realistically be. If/when they add cars (or trains), that'll change, but until then that feels like the ceiling.
> 
> *Saturday hovers around 16 round-trips, usually with one spilling into nominal Sunday morning; Sunday sits around 12.



Anderson -
I appreciate your analysis but it seems to ignore the key point that the current service is just practice for the real service to Orlando. When that starts I assume that they will want to serve the short distance riders with separate trains either that they operate or TriRail does. Those trains will need to be able to accommodate high level platforms. If this is to be TriRail service they need to start getting organized to do so and order some cars.


----------



## jis

Brightline has not said TriRail can operate on the Miami WPB segment of FEC. Until Brightline permits TriRail to operate there TriRail won’t be operating there. 

Brightline has not ordered enough equipment to offer separate short distance service. So for at least the time being there will be no separate short distance service as far as one can tell. Of course things can snd most likely will change as things evolve.


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## cirdan

jis said:


> Brightline has not said TriRail can operate on the Miami WPB segment of FEC. Until Brightline permits TriRail to operate there TriRail won’t be operating there.
> 
> Brightline has not ordered enough equipment to offer separate short distance service. So for at least the time being there will be no separate short distance service as far as one can tell. Of course things can snd most likely will change as things evolve.



I agree.

A lot of people on this forum and elsewhere have been talking about there being an express service and a stopping service, and maybe this has been repeated so often by so many people that it appears to be a fact. But AFAIK, there has not been any official statement to this effect from Brightline/Virgin.

Much as the concept of the overlay of express and stopping trains may appeal to railfans, Brightline / Virgin is not a model railroad in someone's attic but is a costly investment being made with the money of people who (presumably) are not primarily interested in playing trains. As such, maybe an all-stops service is all that we are getting for the forseeable future. Of course there is a wonderful feeling to whooshing through a station without stopping, but schedule-wise and with modern high-performance trains, that is just minutes you are saving at the cost of making the rest of the schedule very complicated.

That said, if the service does grow in popularity among Miami commuters, there may be some scope for conflict with these commuters squeezing out inter city travellers at the Miami end, thus leaving empty seats that are largely unsellable on the rest of the trip. By granting Tri-Rail track access, some relief can be obtained which may actually be revenue positive for Virgin. But I think they will take that decison when they get there.


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## Anderson

I am mostly ignoring Orlando service for right now, partly because of two sets of questions. The first involve frequencies (whether said service will still be hourly, every other hour, etc.). The second involve equipment (namely, how committed are they to having a single, uniform fleet).

The first is totally up in the air, though they seem to be leaning towards doing about 8x/day for now instead of hourly service.

The second hasn't seen an official change, but I suspect we'd see it a long way off in the form of an equipment order.



jis said:


> Brightline has not said TriRail can operate on the Miami WPB segment of FEC. Until Brightline permits TriRail to operate there TriRail won’t be operating there.
> 
> Brightline has not ordered enough equipment to offer separate short distance service. So for at least the time being there will be no separate short distance service as far as one can tell. Of course things can snd most likely will change as things evolve.



Brightline hasn't said they can operate MIA-WPB. They _have_ agreed to allow them access into MIA off of the current line (the Downtown Link): https://www.tri-rail.com/pages/view/downtown-miami-link


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## Tom in PA

From what I could see on the south side of the Beach Line (SR528) yesterday, a lot of work is going on. Miles of trees and brush have been cleared. Grading, leveling and whatever else they do prepping for track is well underway. Part of this route crosses the wetland upper reaches of the St.Johns River and there's only one location where it appears that prep is underway for bridge pilings. 
Construction work is moving from East to West and stops well short of the Orlando metro.


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## jis

There is actually construction going on all the way to the entry point into airport property along 528. In some places you have to know where to look. Construction is also going on in all parts of the RoW within the airport.


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## west point

Will talk to someone in construction. May have idea why bridge work is slower ?


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## Anderson

Well, it's probably because there's a bit more engineering work involved on the bridges (since it's a bit more than just grading, prepping the bed, and putting the tracks/ties into place).


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## nullptr

Brief but interesting interview with Wes Edens, co-founder of Fortress Investment Group. Relevant part to Brightline starts at the 2-minute mark.

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/01/31/wes-edens-on-recent-earnings-and-investing-environment.html

Interesting points

January 29th, 30th, and probably 31st all set daily ridership records
January 2020 up 55% year over year (might have misheard that, but it would put it around 114k)

Anticipates 2020 ridership to double 2019
Seems like they are getting a nice boost from Super Bowl LIV


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## Anderson

I had forgotten the Super Bowl was in Miami this year.

I can believe the January numbers (with the Super Bowl in town). February 1 and 2 will probably be very good days as well (they're laying on a few extra trains for Sunday; not quite sure what they did for Saturday aside from adding a few evening trains).

I'll say that if January ridership is "only" up 55% vs January 2019 (with the Super Bowl in town) I'll be hard-pressed to see ridership double in 2020 _unless _the new stations start coming online for at _least_ Q4. I can buy a 35-50% increase for the year absent that (though 50% would sure be pushing it presuming no other major changes and that they don't start slashing fares or something like that).


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## west point

Other than super bowl ridership -- look at that separately. Has any of its regular trips ended up being sold out yet ?


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## Anderson

west point said:


> Other than super bowl ridership -- look at that separately. Has any of its regular trips ended up being sold out yet ?


I don't have good data points on this front, but based on what I saw about a year ago (when I was snap-checking trains all day to figure out load distributions...before they changed the website and made that a PITA because of the new interface...) it seems probable that they've had some stray peak-hour trains selling out and quite a few coming close on at least one segment. My guess, however, is that if they're selling out it is reasonably close to departure time.


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## west point

If any trips are selling out has there been any indication that longer trains might be operated ? Realize that would call for breaking up the same colors for each train. Forgot if Brightline received any spare cars. Also when is the next delivery of cars due and how few spare train sets are in inventory any time of the day ?


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## nullptr

Their bond filling says they currently have 5 trainsets with 4 passenger coaches, where three are in rotation on any given day. I think you mean redistributing what they currently have which seems possible with the spares they have but they don't talk about. They do talk about going to 8 passenger trainsets with 5 passenger coaches before they open the segment to Orlando. It's an option on their previous purchase valid through August 2021.

On page 41:
https://emma.msrb.org/ER1214891-ER951028-ER1352014.pdf

I also think selling out trains isn't the worse thing for them financially given that they could start raising ticket prices. They're averaging around $20 per ticket where the bond filling estimates $50 for the southern segment.

edit: After looking more closely, $50 for the southern segment might have been their expectation for a business class ticket, the average for all tickets is closer to $33, with their 34% reduction in passenger fare projection being a $25 average.


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## Anderson

I believe they have to have all five in rotation right now. In the morning, SB departures from WPB are:
0510
0610
0640
0710
0740

The first NB departure from Miami is at 0650 and arrives into WPB at 0803, so it physically cannot cover the 0740 departure.

Later in the day, the departures are _mostly_ departing SB at X+0:40 and arriving at X+1:53. NB the departures are at X+0:50 and arrivals at X+2:03. So, if a trainset leaves at 0940 SB, it will arrive in MIA at 1053. It will depart NB at 1150 and arrive at 1303. It can then depart again at 1340.

So I think you've got four sets in "regular" circulation and a fifth gets shaken loose for the extra run in the morning.


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## lordsigma

It’s a good time to be excited by Brightline/VT. But I will remain cautiously optimistic for years to come. We all know that this is a great corridor from a rail transit point of view. What we still don’t know and won’t for a while is if this can work in 2020. It isn’t known yet it a completely private entity can run this service successfully enough to make a profit with little if any state involvement. And not just a profit above the rails, but a profit large enough to give a return on the capital investment. The fact they are still moving toward Orlando after they have operated Miami - WPB is a good sign they at least think it’s possible and are getting enough ridership to continue on. But it still remains to be seen if this will work out - and if it ever didn’t would the state step in to keep it afloat or let it falter.


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## Pere Flyer

lordsigma said:


> It’s a good time to be excited by Brightline/VT. But I will remain cautiously optimistic for years to come. We all know that this is a great corridor from a rail transit point of view. What we still don’t know and won’t for a while is if this can work in 2020. It isn’t known yet it a completely private entity can run this service successfully enough to make a profit with little if any state involvement. And not just a profit above the rails, but a profit large enough to give a return on the capital investment. The fact they are still moving toward Orlando after they have operated Miami - WPB is a good sign they at least think it’s possible and are getting enough ridership to continue on. But it still remains to be seen if this will work out - and if it ever didn’t would the state step in to keep it afloat or let it falter.



Orlando seems pretty inevitable at this point, sometime next year iirc. I think the railroad’s long term fortunes will be determined by the performance of MIA-WPB-ORL, and VTUSA’s given reason to assume that if the ORL numbers are this side of positive, Tampa will be eventual.

I agree that private transportation co’s have a history of failure—that is, growing too large and going bankrupt—and reliance on gov’t assistance/interference. One could argue Brightline _has_ relied on such benefits for successful operation—a local heavy rail transit station at an international airport, zoning on their properties, dispatching, bonds, grade crossings…


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## Anderson

I think there's a material difference between "relying on government" for zoning changes (which is basically the government granting relief from government-imposed restrictions) and doing so for direct financing. That aside, most government involvement other than the bond status has been...er...less than constructive, at least at the local level.


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## Brian_tampa

Monthly ridership and construction reports are out for January 2020.

115109 passengers carried in January up 56% over January 2019
Average fare down 10% but ticket revenue up 41% and overall revenue up 47% (compared to January 2019)


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## west point

Indian River Co going after Brightline again. Wonder if the private money is coming from American airlines ?

https://www.rtands.com/railroad-new...dy-to-do-the-same-with-proposed-bullet-train/ ?


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## Anderson

Code:


     2018     2019     2020
Jan  17,783   73,568  115,109
Feb  24,098   78,707   
Mar  32,899   91,903
Apr  34,615   71,308
May  56,781   85,740
Jun  48,619   80,094
Jul  52,162   83,741
Aug  54,574   74,312
Sep  52,850   61,688
Oct  60,013   83,426
Nov  80,660  100,627
Dec  98,076  127,690




Code:


    2018    2019    2020
Jan          $1.7m   $2.4m
Feb          $1.9m
Mar          $2.3m
Apr          $1.8m
May          $1.7m
Jun  $0.8m   $1.6m
Jul  $1.0m   $1.7m
Aug  $0.9m   $1.5m 
Sep  $1.0m   $1.1m
Oct  $1.0m   $1.7m
Nov  $1.5m   $2.2m
Dec  $2.2m   $2.9m
            $22.1m


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## nullptr

Brian_tampa said:


> Monthly ridership and construction reports are out for January 2020.
> 
> 115109 passengers carried in January up 56% over January 2019
> Average fare down 10% but ticket revenue up 41% and overall revenue up 47% (compared to January 2019)



Two interesting points int the ridership summary:

They started engineering work for the Disney station in February and plan to open the station shortly after the extension is completed. That's the first timeline I've heard about the Disney station (though maybe I missed something) and even though it's somewhat vague, it seems sooner then I anticipated. 
They apparently raised prices at the end of January and revenue is up 19% as of February 19th month to date when compared to January.


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## neroden

How is opex looking? That might allow us to project how many riders they need for operating breakeven at different route lengths (now Orlando, Disney, Tampa). There is no chance of breakeven at this route length but I am wondering whether Orlando is a possibility or whether we have to wait for Disney or Tampa...

Hmm. Last news is from Sept $27 million per quarter. $5.525 million in revenue per quarter last year. So revenue needs to be multiplied by 6 (costs will go up some as well, but I find it hard to estimate the economies of scale... Let's suppose they don't go up much). I do not see much coming from organic shorthaul ridership growth, maybe a doubling max. Suppose that Orlando passengers will pay twice what the current passengers pay and that there will be twice as many of them... That would be just barely enough to break even and I am probably being too optimistic. They still have to cover interest on capex. It looks like they will not be profitable before Disney station opens, and it will be pretty tight even then. They should be pretty stable if they make it to Tampa though.


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## nullptr

For what it's worth their projecting 3 million passengers in the southern segment and 3.5 million from Orlando to the southern segment in 2023. The southern segment estimate does seem optimistic with growth slowing somewhat. 

What is kind of crazy to me is that their biggest expense category on that quarterly statement is "Corporate, general and administrative" which sounds like a generic overhead category but is almost a third of there total operating expense for the quarter.


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## Anderson

neroden said:


> How is opex looking? That might allow us to project how many riders they need for operating breakeven at different route lengths (now Orlando, Disney, Tampa). There is no chance of breakeven at this route length but I am wondering whether Orlando is a possibility or whether we have to wait for Disney or Tampa...
> 
> Hmm. Last news is from Sept $27 million per quarter. $5.525 million in revenue per quarter last year. So revenue needs to be multiplied by 6 (costs will go up some as well, but I find it hard to estimate the economies of scale... Let's suppose they don't go up much). I do not see much coming from organic shorthaul ridership growth, maybe a doubling max. Suppose that Orlando passengers will pay twice what the current passengers pay and that there will be twice as many of them... That would be just barely enough to break even and I am probably being too optimistic. They still have to cover interest on capex. It looks like they will not be profitable before Disney station opens, and it will be pretty tight even then. They should be pretty stable if they make it to Tampa though.


Those estimates did not, I don't think, include Boca or Aventura's stations (and the status of Cocoa and the other stations is also unclear). The early official documentation only indicated four stations, but we're _probably_ looking at no less than nine (Miami, Aventura, Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, West Palm Beach, Stuart/Fort Pierce, Cocoa, Orlando, plus PortMiami "off to the side"). Disney probably brings that to eleven (the Sunrail interchange station gets added there). And I've noted that I expect we may see one or two more stations (I keep expecting Fort Lauderdale-Airport to get one at some point).

My best guess, at this point, is that there's another half-million riders to shake out of the existing stations and another million once you add in Boca and Aventura. Figuring a "rebound" in fares of 10% or so, that would probably put revenue at $13m.

Also, don't forget two other short-term revenue items:
(1) Tri-Rail access to MiamiCentral. This might not be a "cash cow" but it isn't likely to be $0, either. A few million dollars per year seems probable, but that's a few million dollars that won't have to come out of pax revenues.
(2) Revenue from station development. My best guess is that this will track a bit more aggressively than ticket sales (partly due to Tri-Rail access, partly due to generic ramping-up).

Longer-term, I suspect the impact of some version of the Coastal Link project has room to knock a _massive_ hole in the operating situation here, even if it siphons off ridership.


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## neroden

nullptr said:


> What is kind of crazy to me is that their biggest expense category on that quarterly statement is "Corporate, general and administrative" which sounds like a generic overhead category but is almost a third of there total operating expense for the quarter.



It's an economies of scale business. The regulatory paperwork in operating a railroad alone is very large. This actually does not surprise me. This is why they have to get bigger in order to break even -- those costs should stay constant even as trains go to Tampa and Jacksonville.


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## west point

neroden said:


> It's an economies of scale business. The regulatory paperwork in operating a railroad alone is very large. This actually does not surprise me. This is why they have to get bigger in order to break even -- those costs should stay constant even as trains go to Tampa and Jacksonville.



These are actually the same arguments that cause many to have heartburn about the way Amtrak allocates its LD and other costs.


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## Anderson

neroden said:


> It's an economies of scale business. The regulatory paperwork in operating a railroad alone is very large. This actually does not surprise me. This is why they have to get bigger in order to break even -- those costs should stay constant even as trains go to Tampa and Jacksonville.


There are costs that remain roughly fixed (overhead, maintenance facilities, etc.). There are costs that are fixed _per set_, so equipment utilization is key. And there are per-mile (fuel) or per-hour (crew) costs

Jacksonville is actually somewhat problematic compared to the others unless you do a crew change. Presuming that the end-to-end runtime gets down into the 5-hour ballpark (which feels about right; the distance on I-95 is just under 350 miles but I don't know what the _exact_ endpoints are), there's a risk you're going to have some trains "only" making the run one way. Now, you can do some other stuff with those trains (have them do a WPB-MIA run as well) but the crews...it's a sticky proposal to get the operating crew back home under hours of service. A division break at Cocoa for the Jacksonville-bound trains would work around this, to be fair.


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## neroden

west point said:


> These are actually the same arguments that cause many to have heartburn about the way Amtrak allocates its LD and other costs.


I think you're referring to me there


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## chrsjrcj

I can't help but think that Brightline is in a pretty precarious financial position with the virus. Normally the 5:15/5:50 PM departures from Miami are pretty close to full. It looks like they've cancelled the 5:15 PM train for the time being, and the 5:50 PM is about 35% full (based off the seating chart on their website).


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## AGM.12

Perhaps they could qualify for a federal bailout now before Congress


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## Bob Dylan

AGM.12 said:


> Perhaps they could qualify for a federal bailout now before Congress


Watch the Corporate Greed Heads and Billiknsires get all the $$$ once again!


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## chrsjrcj

Service suspended as of today. 









Brightline temporarily suspends service due to coronavirus pandemic


Brightline announced Wednesday that services are temporarily suspended as of Wednesday, March 25, due to the coronavirus pandemic.




www.wptv.com


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