Brightline Trains Florida discussion 2025

[crescent-zephyr]

It would be nice if they could/would add the JAX extension sooner. Just from first glance, it doesn't seem like there would be near as much track building and/or upgrading to do this.

Brightline is kind of inventing their own way to run a railroad - and it's not cheap. The only stations they build are large and complex. If they could just build some simple platforms Jacksonville would be a no-brainer to me as well.

Between the wraps on the cars, the expensive tickets, extra charge to pick a seat, and some strange experiences on board the train (a combination of customer service and loud / rude fellow passengers) - I'm pretty much done with cheering Brightline on.

 

[bonzoesc]

How much of the FEC north of Cocoa is double-tracked, and how quick was the track work between Palm Beach and Cocoa compared to between Cocoa and MCO?

I expect the Tampa extension's happening first because the Tampa metro area has twice the population as Jacksonville, and it's a shorter run from an existing Brightline station. I seem to remember it being mostly new separated trackage down highways, instead of 180 miles of grade crossings.

 

[west point]

My concern is Brightline is going to need even more train sets and passenger cars. The train sets for Tampa and more especially if JAX ever starts. Right now, based on deliveries of Siemens equipment it would take several years delay in getting that equipment based on the present orders Siemens has. When construction of the building is complete the Siemens NC factory may concentrate on the Airo deliveries first.

How quickly the NC factory can get, and train enough skilled workers will also be a time of passenger equipment construction metric.

 

[Anderson]

I think the "missing" plus about adding JAX is that if you run those trains down to MIA, you get extra capacity in South Florida. The complication is that instead of the line being A-B-C-D, you now have two lines in use and have to facilitate transfers or run three train routings (or both).

 

[bonzoesc]

I think the "missing" plus about adding JAX is that if you run those trains down to MIA, you get extra capacity in South Florida. The complication is that instead of the line being A-B-C-D, you now have two lines in use and have to facilitate transfers or run three train routings (or both).

And the flipmode of that is it means those trains aren't running on the demonstrably viable Orlando-SoFlo route, after the expense of updating the trackage and building a Jacksonville station. The SoFlo capacity problems will get addressed with the new cars that're already on order, and a hypothetical FEC corridor Tri-Rail service that Brightline wouldn't have to find another billion dollars for.

 

[jis]

I think it is safe to say that JAX build out won't happen until Brightine can convince itself that the capital sunk for instituting it will produce adequate returns to pay off the loan for it. This makes it almost certain that it won’t happen before Tampa, as Brightline has indicated already.

 

[Anderson]

And the flipmode of that is it means those trains aren't running on the demonstrably viable Orlando-SoFlo route, after the expense of updating the trackage and building a Jacksonville station. The SoFlo capacity problems will get addressed with the new cars that're already on order, and a hypothetical FEC corridor Tri-Rail service that Brightline wouldn't have to find another billion dollars for.

I mean, I presume that if they extended service to JAX they would also purchase additional equipment...but that's probably another half-billion dollars or more (I presume you would need at least a dozen sets plus spares for hourly service MIA-JAX).

Having said that, I'd probably extend to Disney Springs first, and JAX vs TPA becomes a question of approval and logistics. But Disney Springs is also going to require a supplemental equipment order (probably at least 2 sets), as will Tampa (probably another 2-4), and Brightline can probably defend scaling that up a bit to get a few more sets for extra peak hour service (and, you know, being able to pretend to try and meet their ridership projections).

 

[BlackDiamond]

Of course, it would also be nice if they could have two routes to JAX, the one Amtrak now uses and the one through Ocala and Waldo.

I can't imagine CSX would be receptive to passenger trains on its busy S Line.

 

[Anderson]

My concern is Brightline is going to need even more train sets and passenger cars. The train sets for Tampa and more especially if JAX ever starts. Right now, based on deliveries of Siemens equipment it would take several years delay in getting that equipment based on the present orders Siemens has. When construction of the building is complete the Siemens NC factory may concentrate on the Airo deliveries first.

How quickly the NC factory can get, and train enough skilled workers will also be a time of passenger equipment construction metric.

So, from what I recall working up a few years back, Tampa needs about another 5 sets: Tampa is about 90 miles from MCO, so you'd need 3-4 sets to make service work (4 seems like the better number to work with), and then I presumed an extra spare/protect set. This depends a bit on whether Brightline runs trains through (MIA-MCO-TPA) or forces a change at MCO. I suspect they would run most trains through. The wrinkle is that when you look at the old HSR plans, it was expected that you'd essentially run one set of trains MCO-TPA and the other set Disney-MIA, using the overlap to deal with the flood of probable demand in the Orlando area.

JAX is trickier to calculate - I'd use a placeholder of a six-hour runtime to Miami (it could conceivably end up a bit closer to five hours depending on various questions about speed, etc., but six hours seems like a safe bet) and three hours to MCO. I'd suggest that Brightline has three options of what to do here - they could send all of those trains to Miami (this would require about a dozen sets), all of the trains to Orlando (6-7 sets, and add a few if you want to run through to Tampa), or split service (probably around 10 sets, depending on the mix). I believe that my original calculations came out to about 25 sets, but it assumed:
-Hourly Miami-Orlando-Tampa (15 sets)
-Every-other-hour Miami-Jacksonville (6 sets)
-Supplemental trains in South Florida for twice-hourly service south of West Palm (2-3 sets)
-One additional miscellaneous shop/spare set (partly due to scaling, partly due to all the grade crossing incidents).

Re-working that for hourly JAX-MCO service would yield about the same train count (though you'd need to add 2-3 more sets in South Florida to get to twice-hourly down there), and doing split-service would probably require about four sets JAX-MCO and six sets JAX-MIA (so about 27 sets, presuming you don't go to Tampa with the Jacksonville sets).

 

[Anderson]

I can't imagine CSX would be receptive to passenger trains on its busy S Line.

Especially since IIRC part of the deal with selling a chunk of the A-Line to SunRail was that passenger trains wouldn't be coming back on the S-Line.

 

[Cal H]

I did not know that JAX was in the cards - I would love to see that happen in my lifetime...
Without the knowledge of y'all, but only looking at the map of Florida - what about a JAX-MCO-TPA run without changing the MCO-MIA makeup? It would of course mean a transfer for passengers wanting to go from MIA to JAX or TPA, but is that such a terrible thing?

 

[cirdan]

Brightline could also get some revenue by opening up Miami Central Station to Amtrak's two trains a day. They also need more Tri-Rail trains as well. If the funding can be found, extending service to Tampa and even St. Petersburg (the track is still mostly there) would really kick ridership up. They have a great product that people like and they tell others about it. I'm impressed.

I don't think the platform length is sufficient.

Interestingly, unpainted aircraft can actually be slower than painted. The paint can smooth the surface, filling in small joints, gaps, under rivet heads, etc. allowing the aircraft to fly further on the same amount of fuel than an unpainted one, and that can more than offset the added weight of the paint.

http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/B-17/B-17G_42-97656_Eng-47-1722-A.pdf

This may be true when the wrap is new. But what happens when wraps degrade and form tears and tiny bits start detaching? Being up high in the sky, airplanes are exposed to much more UV than trains or buses. I expect this would increase drag? Paint is probably much more long lasting than wraps.

 

[Anderson]

I did not know that JAX was in the cards - I would love to see that happen in my lifetime...
Without the knowledge of y'all, but only looking at the map of Florida - what about a JAX-MCO-TPA run without changing the MCO-MIA makeup? It would of course mean a transfer for passengers wanting to go from MIA to JAX or TPA, but is that such a terrible thing?

AAF set up an LLC for JAX some years ago (so as to potentially buffer investors in that segment from stuff elsewhere in their system):

https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/business/2014/06/24/jacksonville-next-stop-for-all/6828921007/