Brightline Trains Florida discussion 2025

[bonzoesc]

I think they do have an "advantage" in that traffic here is very bad, and the RTO push (Miami-Dade County is starting to require it soon) is making it worse.

 

[Anderson]

Thanks for the excellent and detailed analysis.



I think it's always difficult to constrict ridership and then want to rebuild it. Customers tend to be loyal and will often build their lifestyle around being able to use the train, and in doing so bank on the railroad upholding their side of the bargain by maintaining the service. Brightline have struggled over this twice. the first time was with their total and prolonged shutdown over Covid (at a time that Amtrak delivered a reduced but still essential service) and this in Florida, a state that was supposedly more lenient than many other states on restrictions from a legal perspective. And then a second time by constricting out short haul riders in favor of long haul ones. So basically now they are trying to re-start a third time. Passenger confidence or loyalty is not a commodity that can be taken for granted.

I think they got a mulligan on the first one, if only because the initial shutdown happened alongside everything else shutting down (even Disney!). However, I agree that the second squeeze will be harder to recover from - per their reports at the time, Brightline basically had a *commuter train* covering its operating costs, but they were also shaking out extra capacity at the time (e.g. there was an extra rush hour round-trip) that can't be done with all of the sets now spoken for.

I'm editing to extend and revise on the above:
(1) We've seen the sometimes-catastrophic impact of reliability disruptions in some of the Western LD trains. It can take years to bring those riders back, if they ever return, and that's in a situation where the disruptions were due to "external" actors (though I can't rule out equipment slashing also being at issue, or some other odd-and-end factors such as service expansions on corridors cannibalizing ridership in the case of the Coast Starlight).
(2) My suspicion is that if space returns, it'll be a 2-3 year rebuilding time. However, part of this is because some of the decisions that were taken to optimize ridership on the southern segment aren't doable for the time being (e.g. the extra rush-hour frequency was sort-of shuffled back in in the morning, but it doesn't exist in the evening - if you get off of work at 5 PM, the first train out of Miami you can catch is at 5:45 PM).

[I'll add that I wonder what Brightline's potential for getting past seven cars is - Siemens looks like they have a pretty full order book for the next few years, and as I think I've discussed elsewhere, that'll also come into play with the putative Tampa extension.]

 

[Touchdowntom9]

The return of the commuter pass should be very helpful in generating greater ridership on the short distance segment, and I would expect them to be able to return to 175K+ short distance monthly riders once they reach their targeted 7 car length, as that would mean that even with reserved seats for LD, they are providing the same capacity as they had pre-Orlando extension for short distance.

I also agree that their monthly report was unclear as to the status of their newest coaches arrivals--does anyone know if they have already received the other 10 cars and are just testing them (which would mean 6 car trains should be imminent) or if they have not received them yet at all? I also recall hearing that they may have gone from 10 trains with 4 coaches each to 9 trains with 5 coaches but it wasn't clear if that was just a temporary measure or not (Wikipedia has them listed for 40 coaches with 30 on order, though that figure could easily be out of date).

Perhaps they are being conservative by saying they want to run 7 car trains long term, but these trains should get to 10 coaches in length during rush hour at some point. If not that, then they should be looking to add additional trainsets for greater frequency.

Lastly here is a visual output of their Trailing Twelve Month (TTM) performance--they are growing slow but steadily since their covid shut down. Hopefully this will continue long into the future as service frequency and capacity per train grow.

 

[cirdan]

If my tally is correct they now have 10 sets of two locomotives and five coaches, plus one spare locomotive, with a further 20 coaches on order presumably to be delivered in two batches of 10.

 

[Touchdowntom9]

If my tally is correct they now have 10 sets of two locomotives and five coaches, plus one spare locomotive, with a further 20 coaches on order presumably to be delivered in two batches of 10.

So the expectation is that they will get those 20 additional coaches delivered during the next 3 months (Q2)? Seems to be a quickly approaching deadline but hopefully they can hit it.

 

[Anderson]

So the expectation is that they will get those 20 additional coaches delivered during the next 3 months (Q2)? Seems to be a quickly approaching deadline but hopefully they can hit it.

The January report said the following:

To address this capacity limitation, we have on order 10 more additional Smart class passenger cars and another 10 Premium class cars to be delivered in batches that will allow us to operate seven-car long trains in mid-2025, with a maximum capacity of 450 seats. In December 2024, our second group of new passenger cars shipped from the Siemens facility in Sacramento, California. The cars, configured as Smart class passenger cars, were placed into service as of early January.

Now, I've looked at video from trains this month just now (yay railfans) and they're still five cars long (at least, the five sets I saw were) and at the same time I know the trains got lengthened back in November (witness the spike in ridership). So something is inaccurate here - either they're referencing equipment received earlier in 2024 and making it sound like they're the second batch of cars (those were received earlier in the year) or they've received the next 10 (but they aren't in service yet).

Notably, them not being in service makes Brightline's outlook appear just a bit better (since they're not doing January's numbers with some element of six car trains being in play).

 

[ManganeseFrog]

The first 5 cars were delivered in late September and began entering service in October, right before Milton. Afterwards, Brightline temporarily cannibalized cars off of 2 sets to create 9 5-car sets, with 1 set having 2 premium cars, and operated with 2 fewer round trips. The second 5 cars were delivered in December and began entering service in late December and they returned to the regular schedule, I believe, on January 6th. As far as I know, the third round of 5 cars has not been delivered yet.

 

[cirdan]

The first 5 cars were delivered in late September and began entering service in October, right before Milton. Afterwards, Brightline temporarily cannibalized cars off of 2 sets to create 9 5-car sets, with 1 set having 2 premium cars, and operated with 2 fewer round trips. The second 5 cars were delivered in December and began entering service in late December and they returned to the regular schedule, I believe, on January 6th. As far as I know, the third round of 5 cars has not been delivered yet.

Something doesn't add up here.

I assume one set must have been cannibalized, not two. This would have provided 4 cars (one of which Premium) with which to extend the remaining four 4 cars sets to 5 cars each.

 

[ManganeseFrog]

Something doesn't add up here.

I assume one set must have been cannibalized, not two. This would have provided 4 cars (one of which Premium) with which to extend the remaining four 4 cars sets to 5 cars each.

I should have clarified, they took one red car and two orange cars out of their respective sets and combined the remaining cars into the 9th set. Seems odd but it must have been more convenient.

 

[Anderson]

Thanks. That explains the "Frankenstein sets" (colors not matching).