Brightline Trains Florida discussion

[cirdan]

I wonder to what extent crossing issues can be mitigated if a standard design of overpass were created, maybe even used prefabricated parts. This would avoid having to deal with each crossing as an individual project and cut back on the engineering and arcitectural costs while also creating economies of scale on the actual construction site with the same team going from one site to the next and doing exactly the same work. Such an underpass should have sufficient clearance to permit a future electrification.

 

[George Harris]

I wonder to what extent crossing issues can be mitigated if a standard design of overpass were created, maybe even used prefabricated parts. This would avoid having to deal with each crossing as an individual project and cut back on the engineering and arcitectural costs while also creating economies of scale on the actual construction site with the same team going from one site to the next and doing exactly the same work. Such an underpass should have sufficient clearance to permit a future electrification.

The bridges themselves are pretty well standardized. The approaches less so, nor is it practical to do so. Engineers do think regardless of what a lot of seem to believe.,

 

[Anderson]

Most of what I have seen seems to be #1 or #3. There's a lot of confused NIMBYism, though I suspect some of that is folks thinking they're going to see a mile-long unit train roll through town each hour. There's also obvious resentment at folks north of Palm Beach who aren't getting any stations in the current plan and have no indication of getting one in a future phase. I suspect a lot of that concern would abate if AAF either (A) clearly added a few stops in future plans for those areas or (B) indicated a willingness to offer some sort of coastal "local" service a few times per day as part of the first phase, even in exchange for some limited subsidy to cover some associated costs (for example, asking for a share of the extra cost of equipment). When I see how many towns get excited for a single Amtrak train per day, or for a second train when that happens on a route getting expanded, it is hard to see some of these towns not being happy for an alternative to I-95...and while a stop-heavy local service might not be profitable, running a few local trains with partial subsidies might make for a comparatively "cheap" buy-off.

 

[cirdan]

Most of what I have seen seems to be #1 or #3. There's a lot of confused NIMBYism, though I suspect some of that is folks thinking they're going to see a mile-long unit train roll through town each hour. There's also obvious resentment at folks north of Palm Beach who aren't getting any stations in the current plan and have no indication of getting one in a future phase. I suspect a lot of that concern would abate if AAF either (A) clearly added a few stops in future plans for those areas or (B) indicated a willingness to offer some sort of coastal "local" service a few times per day as part of the first phase, even in exchange for some limited subsidy to cover some associated costs (for example, asking for a share of the extra cost of equipment). When I see how many towns get excited for a single Amtrak train per day, or for a second train when that happens on a route getting expanded, it is hard to see some of these towns not being happy for an alternative to I-95...and while a stop-heavy local service might not be profitable, running a few local trains with partial subsidies might make for a comparatively "cheap" buy-off.

I think this is the difference between railroad the government runs and one run privately.

The government seeks to please and serve as many people as possible. A private company seeks to maximise profit. All the people who moan and whine and say passenger railroading should be made profitable and transferred to the private sector and no more tax money for passenger rail need to walk the talk as they're getting what they wished for. They can't have it both ways. AAF not building a station in their town is no different to Starbucks not building a franchise in their town. I really don't have much sympathy. If they really want things changed, they should be prepared to bring money to the negotiating table. Maybe they will end up understanding why passenger rail gets subsidized in the first place.

 

[Anderson]

Well, and that's why I raised the specter of at least picking up part of the tab on the equipment. If a new train costs $25m, then adding even a relatively low-frequency additional local service could easily cost $50-100m (2-4 sets) even if the stations were free. At the same time, that equipment is likely to get bought sooner or later for any service expansions (either in frequency or in area).

The Starbucks analogy isn't great...there's at least some point to be made about disruptive traffic. The best example I can actually think of is a theme park...granted, part of the reason is to get people into the park to spend money, but there's a reason parks can end up offering discounted in-state passes (versus the cost of a similar pass for an out-of-state resident...when I got a year-long pass to Disney World, it cost me about $120 more than it would have if I was a Florida resident) and the like. IIRC, Busch Gardens did something similar in Williamsburg for a while (it might have only been a Kingsmill thing, but I want to say they had a similar offer for local residents as well)...likely due in no small part to the traffic problems they created every day during the season until they got their own exit from the interstate.

One thing that FEC could probably do, also, is point out that a passenger operation on their lines would be far less disruptive than increasing freight ops by a large amount.

 

[Paulus]

The one thing that really annoys me about the opposition to All Aboard Florida: 90% of those complaining wouldn't have noticed a single thing if the FEC had simply added an extra freight train every hour in each direction. It gives the impression that one should introduce passenger service as a fait accompli.

 

[Anderson]

The one thing that really annoys me about the opposition to All Aboard Florida: 90% of those complaining wouldn't have noticed a single thing if the FEC had simply added an extra freight train every hour in each direction. It gives the impression that one should introduce passenger service as a fait accompli.

Which they might well have done, if a federal loan had not been part of the picture. Had FEC been in a position to simply drop a bunch of passenger frequencies onto existing track without much needed in the way of upgrades, I could see a situation where they find a way to announce the service after all the land acquisition is complete, development has been approved or can't really be blocked, and the cars are on order.

 

[jis]

The one thing that really annoys me about the opposition to All Aboard Florida: 90% of those complaining wouldn't have noticed a single thing if the FEC had simply added an extra freight train every hour in each direction. It gives the impression that one should introduce passenger service as a fait accompli.

The first problem is that FEC could not possibly run the proposed schedule on the current track. If they could they would not be constructing new tracks. Afterall they are not in the business of charity for track building contractors.
They would have noticed when grade crossings started getting modified in conjunction with double tracking. Typically people are not as stupid and uninformed as one might think, just because they happen to disagree with what I like.

 

[Green Maned Lion]

Jishnu, intelligent people aren't uninformed usually. The great unwashed aren't generally uninformed so much as wildly misinformed.

 

[Paulus]

All Aboard Florida has filed documents to confirm right of extension to Jacksonville on FEC

http://m.actionnewsjax.com/news/news/documents-filed-clerk-indicate-high-speed-rail-pla/ngTJQ/

 

[Anderson]

(1) Jis, FEC could have presented a freight expansion plan of some sort (possibly with "sloppy" projections) alongside a bare-bones passenger operation on track with improved condition. Something limited (like the state's Amtrak plan a few years back) wouldn't have raised too many eyebrows outside the railfan community. Then once that was more or less in place, a surprise announcement adding a bunch of passenger service to "fill unused capacity" would likely have left the communities along the line upside down. The expansion would have been mostly down to freight, and track condition improvements provide interesting options in terms of depreciation and deferring maintenance later (such as I believe BNSF has done with keeping track in Class 5 condition in some places).

(2) So...odds that a passenger train pulls into Jacksonville on the FEC before it pulls into Orlando on the FEC?

 

[MikefromCrete]

Orlando will definitely be first. That's the market. If you mean an Amtrak train will run on the FEC before AAF, I wouldn't bet on it. Amtrak seems incapable of making any positive changes lately. Amtrak will also probably ask for some kind of state assistance and the current governor would certainly oppose it.

 

[jis]

No, I would think that an FEC service between Miami and Jax will get going even if Amtrak cannot get its act together. I am hearing that it will be an FEC operation, not Amtrak. Amtrak might join the party at a suitable time of its choice hopefully. It looks like Amtrak's relevance in intra-Florida service may be a declining concept, ending up sort of like say along the lines of the way things are on Long Island or Metro North territory, or even intra-New Jersey for that matter.

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[Anderson]

Orlando is the market, agreed. I'm just wondering about timeframes...Orlando has already become the object of much schedule slip (to the point that Fortress went and issued all those bonds last week to at least get started while the Feds look over their applications), and FEC has been talking about running trains only as far as Cocoa as a first phase. Running as far as Cocoa makes very little sense from what I can tell; depending on what they need to do north of Cocoa in terms of track improvements and station construction, my thinking is that it would make decent sense at that point to just start work on that line (which laying the pipe for land transfers hints at) while still aggressively pursuing Orlando.

Edit: To explain, the Orlando line has to be built from scratch and a terminal built at the airport, on what I believe is OIA property. The Jacksonville line will need track improvements and stations to be built, but if I'm not mistaken all of that can take place on FEC-owned property, and FEC should have some servicing facilities in Jacksonville that can be used.

The other way to look at it is that once AAF/FEC get their new trains purchased, once those are delivered they go on a depreciation schedule whether they run or not. If AAF can't run trains into Orlando, better to be able to run them into Jacksonville and get something out of them than to bet on being able to pass off a connecting bus at Cocoa as acceptable.

 

[Anderson]

Another consideration is that if you fall back to the schedules from 1956, you can easily produce an average speed of 50 MPH on the train. That's not perfectly drive time competitive, true, but it's not horridly slow like you get in a lot of places and it isn't like I-95 in South Florida is a bastion of the open road. However, once the improvements south of Cocoa are done, I'd be surprised if you couldn't beat those schedules by a significant amount. Again falling back on the 1956 timetable and using Cocoa-Rockledge station as a convenient stand-in for the Cocoa stop for AAF (not in the least because the station is likely already in use), we find ourselves at mile marker 174 south of Jacksonville. For handy reference, Miami's station is at mile marker 366 and I presume that is a fair guess as to the location of the new station as well; that gives 192 miles south of Cocoa. West Palm Beach is at mile marker 299 (67 miles north of Miami) and Fort Lauderdale is at mile marker 341 (25 miles north of Miami). Also as a handy reference, Orlando International Airport to Cocoa comes out to 38.2 miles; OIA to that station might be another few miles, depending on where the split would come in and where that station was.

AAF wants to run trains Miami-Orlando in three hours or thereabouts. Even assuming that the AAF trains could manage an average speed of 110 MPH for those 38 miles, you'd still need to take about 20-25 minutes off the travel time there to "back up" to Cocoa...which gives about 2:30-2:40 Miami-Cocoa. Looking back to the 1956 timetable, the Havana Special did Jacksonville-Cocoa in 3:16, the City of Miami in 2:56, the East Coast Champion in 2:47, and the Miamian in 2:53. I'm going to call the time 2:50 (the Havana Special was an FEC-only train that was timed not unlike the Twilight Shoreliner in terms of aiming to keep its endpoints at a decent hour), but also note that this includes stops at Ormond, Daytona, and New Smyrna (with a ten-minute hold at the latter in most cases) that would likely be able to be dropped to make up for track conditions.

On the assumption that FEC could improve its northern tracks to match those times north of Cocoa, a through train should be able to do the run in about 5:30. That is very competitive with the interstates (especially amid traffic roulette all along I-95) and probably makes more sense than a train terminating at Cocoa.

 

[Brian_tampa]

The project schedule slip IMO has been due to the lengthened time required for the EIS process to be completed. From what I have seen, AAF always planned to build the WPB to Miami section first. That is why AAF requested the EA and the resulting FONSI decision of record for this section first. Even the FRA considers it to be a segment of independent utility. Fortress had a decision to make back in early 2012: go for a RRIF loan or self fund it with investors and other private funds. Even if they don't get the RRIF loan, they will still have to follow the FEIS recommendations in regards to the mitigation requirements.

Another reason for schedule slip is that the negotiations with GOAA took much longer than what the original schedule expected. Also, AAF has no role in building the airport station at Orlando, meaning they are left exposed to whatever delays happen to that government project. The Orlando station won't be finished until 2017 at the earliest is what I have seen documented.

I believe the bond sale would have happened regardless of schedule slip.

As far as expansion of service beyond the initial Miami to Orlando route, AAF has told me that no further expansion will be considerd until they are sure that the initial route is successful. That won't be known until 2019 at the earliest. I don't expect anything to happen north of the "Cocoa curve" as AAF calls it, until the early 2020's. Also, the lease agreement AAF signed with OOCEA explicitly prohibits any passengers carried between Orlando and locations in Brevard County. I would not expect a station in Cocoa for a long time if ever. Unless they renegotiate the lease and pay more money for lost toll revenue.

Even if AAF wanted to run trains north of WPB after they take possession of the train sets they could not. The USCG would never allow that disruption to the draw bridges at Jupiter Inlet and Stuart. AAF would have to get a revised permit to operate more trains. At this point AAF would have to wait for the final EIS and also make the required changes in order to meet the USCG permit to run any trains.

FECR on the other hand can increase freight service as they are an existing operator on the route and not required to make changes. FECR used to run almost twice the number of trains as recently as 15 years ago through Stuart.

 

[Anderson]

A Cocoa station is likely if AAF ends up running JAX-MIA trains. Even if Cocoa-Orlando passengers aren't permitted and the Cocoa station isn't a stop on those trains (or it's an R/D stop with tickets only sold for those going south...think LD trains on the NEC), the station still makes sense.

Also, I don't expect train delivery to be finished before an EIS would be complete. Even if they placed an order Monday morning, it would probably take a year or more to get new equipment (which they've said they want to use), and the EIS is already under way for the line to Orlando. It's a good question as to how much time an EIS for the northern segment would take.

I'm going to defer to your connections with AAF for knowledge (much as I do with Charlie in the Northwest, for example), but I would ask in all sincerity when you were told that. I only ask because something said in 2012 wouldn't necessarily still hold, for example.

 

[jphjaxfl]

Anything beyond the initial Miami to Orlando route is, as Brian, said many years into the future. All Aboard Florida is focusing on the tourist destinations in South Florida and Orlando. Many Europeans and other foreign tourists travel to South Florida and then to Orlando before they return home. I have had friends from abroad who seriously want to travel by train from South Florida to Orlando and can't believe the Silver Meteor is the only real train and when they experience it, they are even more puzzled.

 

[jis]

Yup. Whenever it happens (if it does) it is likely that FEC will run an intra-Florida MIA - JAX service before Amtrak manages to get into the act. Unless of course something completely unexpected and good comes to pass.

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[cirdan]

FECR on the other hand can increase freight service as they are an existing operator on the route and not required to make changes. FECR used to run almost twice the number of trains as recently as 15 years ago through Stuart.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why did they lose so many trains?

I thought most railroads are now running more trains than they were 15 years ago, at least on their main lines, which is why Amtrak is facing a bit of a squeeze in terms of route capacity.

 

[Anderson]

FECR on the other hand can increase freight service as they are an existing operator on the route and not required to make changes. FECR used to run almost twice the number of trains as recently as 15 years ago through Stuart.

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but why did they lose so many trains?

I thought most railroads are now running more trains than they were 15 years ago, at least on their main lines, which is why Amtrak is facing a bit of a squeeze in terms of route capacity.

They had a major dropoff with the recession, IIRC, and for some unknown reason they didn't get the same rebound most others did.

 

[Brian_tampa]

Brian_Tampa

From what I know, FECR made a decision to run longer and less frequent trains. They did indeed have a major reduction in rock trains as well. Their traffic now is primarily containers and intermodal. You should see their trains and how long they are now!

Not sure if the change was due to change of ownership or also because of the recession that happened around the same time.

 

[jis]

Here is an illustration of how at least one Chamber of Commerce (happens to be in the town next to the one I am moving to) is trying to be proactive regarding the AAF project with the hope of getting service on the MIA - JAX project when it happens, and getting heat for it from some:

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/opinion/readers/letters/2014/07/07/letter-will-aboard-florida-open-door-amtrak/12213469/

Interesting that someone from Vero which is not even in Brevard County, is getting upset about what Melbourne is saying. Upset because it is not joining the Jupiter NIMBY bandwagon I suppose. The Mayor of Jupiter did a big dog and pony show with the Realtors of Brevard on Merritt Island several weeks back, and was apparently not received as warmly as he had hoped. My real estate agent asked me about this whole thing and I was happy to educate her and her colleagues the best I could. Niether the TPO nor the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce was ready to keel over.

And no, the Brevard TPO did not say that Amtrak operates without subsidies. It said that it would not need any ongoing operating subsidy from Brevard, beyond one time costs of setting up station etc. The operating cost of the station is going to be handled by some other means apparently, perhaps through associated real estate development for businesses, in the areas adjacent to the station.

Just goes to show that someone with their minds made up will re-interpret almost anything that is said in ways that are not necessarily connected even remotely with reality to make a point.

Here is a related story about Phase 1 progress:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/broward/fl-all-aboard-fort-lauderdale-station-20140708,0,3360730.story

 

[Ryan]

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/opinion/readers/letters/2014/07/07/letter-will-aboard-florida-open-door-amtrak/12213469/

Interesting that someone from Vero which is not even in Brevard County, is getting upset about what Melbourne is saying. Upset because it is not joining the Jupiter NIMBY bandwagon I suppose.

I'm now 50% more dumber for having read that.

 

[Caesar La Rock]

http://www.floridatoday.com/story/opinion/readers/letters/2014/07/07/letter-will-aboard-florida-open-door-amtrak/12213469/

Interesting that someone from Vero which is not even in Brevard County, is getting upset about what Melbourne is saying. Upset because it is not joining the Jupiter NIMBY bandwagon I suppose.

I'm now 50% more dumber for having read that.

I'll take your word for it and not read it. Last thing I need is something lowering my IQ.