Yeah, I think using the term "mismanaged" suggest there may be a bit of Monday morning quarterbacking from the armchair going on here.
Until two years back more people were convinced that Brightline will crash and burn, and Brightline took arguably a prudent course even before Covid struck, fully shutting down Brightline for a while with almost everyone furloughed/laid off all the way upto Vice President level in some cases.
They will recover fine, but they will need to get more equipment than they currently have on order. I understand additional equipment order is about to be placed. We will know more about it soon enough.
Meanwhile some more scuttlebutt fro people in the know about Brightline:
- The Cocoa station unlike the Stuart station will be a two platform track station on the Orlando side. It will have large bus bays to accommodate Cruise Terminal shuttles and such. some tracks will be moved around to build it and accommodation will be made for a third platform track for use of future service to Jacksonville.
- There will be development of mixed housing, offices and a large parking structure in the lot adjacent to the Cocoa station.
- The exact design of the station head house is still being worked.
- Someone dug into property transaction records and discovered that Brightline has recently acquire land by FECR RoW in Titusville, Bunnell and St. Augustine area. No one knows for sure what that means, since it is generally understood that nothing will happen to the North before Tampa is done.