Brightline Trains Florida discussion 2024

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

Brightline Florida has had three sources of government funding, besides the easy political path paved by Tallahassee, Grupo Mexico, the toll road authority, the airport authority, and energy company FPL, always a big player in Florida politics, and source of the arguably greenwash diesel compound. I think Brightline is great, but facts are facts. I slept easily in my onboard seat, and the station bathroom was excellent. Frequency is amazing.

1. Billions in bonds that are tax-free for investors.
2. Small FRA safety grants, such as for a van to teach children and adults to be careful around the tracks.
3. Stations paid for locally, using whatever mix of state grants, federal grants and tax revenue.

It's surprising the pedestrian skyway to Aventura Mall has not been built. It's the fanciest mall in Miami Dade county, right on the Broward border. Plans must have met ring around the rosy on the funding.

 

[jis]

Brightline Florida has had three sources of government funding, besides the easy political path paved by Tallahassee, Grupo Mexico, the toll road authority, the airport authority, and energy company FPL, always a big player in Florida politics, and source of the arguably greenwash diesel compound. I think Brightline is great, but facts are facts. I slept easily in my onboard seat, and the station bathroom was excellent. Frequency is amazing.

1. Billions in bonds that are tax-free for investors.
2. Small FRA safety grants, such as for a van to teach children and adults to be careful around the tracks.
3. Stations paid for locally, using whatever mix of state grants, federal grants and tax revenue.

It's surprising the pedestrian skyway to Aventura Mall has not been built. It's the fanciest mall in Miami Dade county, right on the Broward border. Plans must have met ring around the rosy on the funding.

Since you are making general claims about funding it would be more convincing if you could provide some citations to what funding exactly was provided by Grupo Mexico, Central Florida Turnpike Authority and the Orange County Airport Authority. Just looking for verification of the facts you claim. Thanks for your indulgence.

 

[bonzoesc]

It's surprising the pedestrian skyway to Aventura Mall has not been built. It's the fanciest mall in Miami Dade county, right on the Broward border. Plans must have met ring around the rosy on the funding.

It doesn’t measure up to Brickell City Center (which is a walk to the south end of the Miami Brightline station and Metromover APM ride away) in my opinion, but it does absolutely dunk on Dadeland and the two west of the airport.

 

[JamesWhitcombRiley]

Since you are making general claims about funding it would be more convincing if you could provide some citations to what funding exactly was provided by Grupo Mexico, Central Florida Turnpike Authority and the Orange County Airport Authority. Just looking for verification of the facts you claim. Thanks for your indulgence.

Yeah, that was a terrible run-on sentence of mine. I meant to say the stars were aligned politically for Brightline, not that those entities provided funding. The tax-free bonds, I suppose we don't know who bought them. I saw them described as "private placement," but don't know anything about that. The long-term benefit is said to be in real estate, just like the old days of Florida. Too bad Amtrak can't be so nimble.

Grupo Mexico is the owner of FEC, the freight railroad that shares tracks with Brightline between Miami and Coco, for those that don't know. Brightline's owner Fortress was owned by Softbank in Japan, and now is owned by a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. But management has always been with Fortress, and that continues.

 

[jis]

Yeah, that was a terrible run-on sentence of mine. I meant to say the stars were aligned politically for Brightline, not that those entities provided funding. The tax-free bonds, I suppose we don't know who bought them. I saw them described as "private placement," but don't know anything about that. The long-term benefit is said to be in real estate, just like the old days of Florida. Too bad Amtrak can't be so nimble.

Here is what Private Placement is all about and how it works:

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/privateplacement.asp

Looks like it is part of being a nimble startup's way of getting initial seed funding.

Grupo Mexico is the owner of FEC, the freight railroad that shares tracks with Brightline between Miami and Coco, for those that don't know. Brightline's owner Fortress was owned by Softbank in Japan, and now is owned by a sovereign wealth fund in Abu Dhabi. But management has always been with Fortress, and that continues.

More than merely sharing tracks, FECR actually owns the tracks and associated properties that originally belonged to Flagler's FEC Railroad and Brightline is a tenant. However, by mutual agreement the operations on those tracks and on Brightline owned tracks in Florida are managed and dispatched by a jointly and equally owned subsidiary of FECR and Brightline named Florida Dispatching Company. All this was setup with very long term ironclad contracts before FECR was separated from the Fortress Group and sold to a subsidiary of Grupo Mexico.

Also. Brightline is not directly owned by Fortress Group. Fortress Group owns Florida East Coast Industries, which owns Brightline and two other companies:

Flagler Global Logistics which works closely with FECR providing integrated logistics, including multi-modal shipping, warehousing and supply chain services.

Flagler which is the full service commercial real estate company that in the perception of some of the public is part of the real estate business associated with Brightline, in addition to the 2 million square feet of multi use real estate space to be directly developed by Brightline.

Meanwhile the change of ownership of Fortress Group turned out to be more complex as the US Government intervened and required significant changes before permitting the sale from Softbank of the entire group, since it was concerned about the Mubadala Capital (Abu Dhabi) relations with China. The change of ownership was finally approved in May of this year (2024), and finally Fortress ended up with 30% taken private and 70% sold to Mubadala Group.

Notwithstanding all these complexities, Wes Edens, the boss of Fortress Group takes a keen interest in Brightline and without his personal interest there probably would have been no Brightline.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

I see any manned F&B service on Brightline to be much more of a financial risk.

Brightline already pays to staff the trains with F&B employees and to stock the trains with F&B supplies. I'm not sure where the financial risk comes from?

 

[thefirewarde]

Brightline already pays to staff the trains with F&B employees and to stock the trains with F&B supplies. I'm not sure where the financial risk comes from?

Operating an entire car without adding any additional seats, I'd guess. Regardless of ultimate profitability they'd be nuts to order any passenger car that doesn't have revenue seats right now.

 

[cirdan]

Operating an entire car without adding any additional seats, I'd guess. Regardless of ultimate profitability they'd be nuts to order any passenger car that doesn't have revenue seats right now.

The cafeteria cars might be half cafeteria/service area and half regular seating.

It all depends on what value Brightline sees in providing a level of food and beverage service above what they have now. This will be for Brightline to decide and not us, and there are obviously arguments both ways.

 

[west point]

Will food service bring more rider revenue to be a net positive after paying for the food service?

 

[cirdan]

Will food service bring more rider revenue to be a net positive after paying for the food service?

Amtrak appears to think so. Many airlines think so too.
On the other hand, the Shinkansen appears to think not.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

Will food service bring more rider revenue to be a net positive after paying for the food service?

I'm guessing the current in-station and on-board food service is already operating at a loss.

 

[MARC Rider]

Amtrak appears to think so. Many airlines think so too.
On the other hand, the Shinkansen appears to think not.

There's a difference between an Amtrak long-distance train where people are on board for hours or days and a short corridor trip, especially if one can pick up stuff at the departing station. Same for airlines. I usually fly Southwest out of BWI. Essentially no food service, except for drinks and a packet of pretzels, assuming the flight isn't so bumpy that they cancel drink service.

They have to make some provision for food for the long-distance passengers, whether a full dining car, flex meals, the cafe car, food served at the seat, or a meal stop at a trackside greasy spoon.

Brightline is a corridor operation. The longest trip is about 3 and half hours, and I suspect most passengers are making shorter trips. For trips that short, I could see the benefit of picking up any food or drink at the station before departure and not hoping the food cart will come around before my trip is over (or being stuck in line at the face car hearing an announcement for my station.) What they should have is a well-stocked grab and go kiosk at every station, not fancy on-board meal service. Heck, I'd like to see something like that on the NEC.

 

[bonzoesc]

My two most common Brightline trips are Miami to Orlando in the mid to late morning and Orlando to Miami in the evening. My problems with getting food at the station in either direction is either that I’m not hungry enough to think I need to, or that I do eat at the station, but not to excess and get snacky a few hours in. The benefit of a cafe over a cart is that there can be a wider variety of options, and that one employee doesn’t have to go row-by-row to all the people that don’t really want anything.

Once there’re more than three cars of coach seating, having the customers go to the cafe car will probably be significant if they want a Celsius energy drink on the commute from Aventura to downtown Miami.

 

[cirdan]

Brightline is a corridor operation. The longest trip is about 3 and half hours,

This will change when the extensions to Tampa and Jacksonville come to be.

BTW, Amtrak offers cafeteria service on the NEC, even though many trips made there will also be 3 hours or under.

 

[MARC Rider]

BTW, Amtrak offers cafeteria service on the NEC, even though many trips made there will also be 3 hours or under.

Where? What trains? As far as I've ever experienced, it's all cafe car, where you have to get in line and order, and the attendant has to mess around with the payment.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

Where? What trains? As far as I've ever experienced, it's all cafe car, where you have to get in line and order, and the attendant has to mess around with the payment.

It's obvious to me that the poster was referencing the cafe cars. Not everyone is 100% familiar with the differences between Cafeteria, Cafe, Lounge, Diner-Lounge, Bistro, Diner, Dinette, Buffet, Cross Country Cafe, and other unique titles Amtrak has used haha.

 

[Harmon Shay]

I've become completely confused about Brightline cars to come. My understanding is that there are ten cafeteria cars plus 20 coaches not yet delivered but coming up soon. Am I right about that?

 

[jis]

I've become completely confused about Brightline cars to come. My understanding is that there are ten cafeteria cars plus 20 coaches not yet delivered but coming up soon. Am I right about that?

AFAIK the current consists are four cars. Enough cars have been ordered to expand them to seven cars each. Eventually there are plans and possibly options in the till to grow them to 10 cars. My understanding is that a Cafe car, if any comes somewhere in the later tranches, not yet ordered. But of course I am happy to be corrected by anyone who has more upto date information.

First week of September is the Annual Meeting of FECRS at Jacksonville, which I will attend. There will be senior folks from Brightline there usually including Patrick Goddard, so we will know from the proverbial horse's mouth what is going on with Brightline, or at least as much as they would be willing to share.

 

[thefirewarde]

They have cars ordered for seven car consists, with three batches of ten due this year soon, this year or early next, and sometime 2025. It's not clear if all the cars are SMART or if #21-30 are a different configuration. As far as anyone knows, there's no ordered equipment that has non-cart food service.

 

[jis]

They have cars ordered for seven car consists, with three batches of ten due this year soon, this year or early next, and sometime 2025. It's not clear if all the cars are SMART or if #21-30 are a different configuration. As far as anyone knows, there's no ordered equipment that has non-cart food service.

Good to know. I had missed the third set order. AFAIK they probably have a price stability option of some sort for growing to ten per consist but configuration of individual cards TBD at the time of conversion of option to order.

 

[Harmon Shay]

So, 30 coaches, no cafe cars, something the upcoming meeting will likely confirm. Thanks very much to all for the info.

 

[thefirewarde]

There's also the potential issue when Brightline hit their planned consist length, that even a half cafe car in the middle of the consist for convenience represents 30+ revenue seats lost. On peak travel hours that's likely to be significant if they continue to fill trains.

Their planned seats per trainset is 8x 66 + 2x 50 seats, or 628 total seats per hour. Cutting more than 5% of their peak capacity isn't a great call. Honestly I've wondered if a true bilevel car (taller than a Superliner) is viable, with seating for 100 or so along with a flat first level with US standard height boarding, and a fully walk through second level upstairs with additional seating. This would be in lieu of adding capacity for half hourly trips.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

There's also the potential issue when Brightline hit their planned consist length, that even a half cafe car in the middle of the consist for convenience represents 30+ revenue seats lost. On peak travel hours that's likely to be significant if they continue to fill trains

They could always assign the table seats in the cafe car if everything else is sold out. Northeast Regional style!

 

[bonzoesc]

Honestly I've wondered if a true bilevel car (taller than a Superliner) is viable, with seating for 100 or so along with a flat first level with US standard height boarding, and a fully walk through second level upstairs with additional seating. This would be in lieu of adding capacity for half hourly trips.

I’m pretty sure more trainsets using existing designs, double-tracking Cocoa to MCO, and having Miami-Palm Beach service to allow more frequent service during rush hours is more feasible than the engineering work to run new bi-level cars.

I can also see the planned public SFRTA service down the FEC corridor taking a lot of the coach passengers if it opens in ten years or something, and Brightline is undoubtedly planning for that; not only the much cheaper rides, but the additional catchment for Orlando services it'll bring too.

 

[Harmon Shay]

I hear that the NEC-style table seat selling on sold-out trips is the plan for the Cascades when the Airos get here (Seattle). I understand we're supposed to get table seats instead of coach seats in our Airo cafe cars.