Code:
2021 November 61,045 0.6 $ 582,979 $ 9.83 $ 9.55 0.8 $13.11
2021 December 95,348 1.3 $1,259,547 $13.63 $13.21 1.6 $13.63
2021 156,393 1.8 $1,842,309 $11.51 $11.78 2.4* $15.34
Year Month Ridership Tix Rev-A Tix Rev-B PPR-A PPR-B Tot Rev Total PPR
2022 January 64,243 1.3 $1,254,666 $20.24 $19.53 1.5 $23.35
2022 February 77,806 1.6 $1,624,589 $20.56 $20.88 1.9 $24.42
2022 March 107,069 2.3 $2,289,135 $21.48 $21.38 2.7 $25.22
2022 April 93,922 1.9 $1,926,340 $20.23 $20.51 2.3 $24.49
2022 May 102,796 2.2 $2,178,247 $21.40 $21.19 2.6 $25.29
2022 June 92,304 1.7 $1,713,162 $18.42 $18.56 2.1 $22.75
2022 July 111,582 1.9 $1,896,894 $17.03 $17.00 2.3 $20.61
2022 August 100,116 1.9 $1,917,221 $18.98 $19.15 2.4 $23.97
2022 September 91,577 1.8 $1,769,268 $19.66 $19.32 2.5 $27.30
2022 October 102,615 2.1 $2,126,183 $20.46 $20.72 3.0 $29.24
2022 November 102,544 2.2 $2,213,925 $21.45 $21.59 3.4 $33.16
2022 December 183,920 3.7 $3,733,576 $20.12 $20.30 5.1 $27.73
2022 1,230,494 24.6 $24,643,207 $19.99 31.8 $25.84
2023 January 156,137 3.5 $3,538,064 $22.41 $22.66 4.7 $30.10
2023 February 151,654 3.7 $3,654,861 $24.39 $24.10 4.7 $30.99
Analysis on February 2023:
Ridership is up just under 100% from February 2022. Revenue is up approximately 125%. However, I think it's less than ideal to refer back to last February (that was stil in the ramp-up from the service break due to Winnie the Flu coming to down). If we mark against the average of March-November 2022 (100,503), the increase is almost exactly 50% (50.9% to be more exact). Of interest is that the numerical increase is 51,151. Per Brightline's numbers, new-station data is 37,963, leaving an increase on the original stations of 13,188 (or 13.1% just between the pre-existing stations - that is, ignoring Aventura/Boca Raton).
While we're at it, ridership in January was 5,037/day (31 days). Ridership in February was 5,416/day (28 days), so on that metric regular ridership seems to still be edging higher. I'd note that in December, non-special event train ridership (142,479) was 4,596/day. In November, for comparison, this figure was 3,418. As another comparison, if February's ridership was spread over 31 days instead of 28 days, monthly ridership would have been 167,896.
PPR is up about 22% since that same Mar-Nov timeframe. Brightline has noted increases in fares and that they have made significant increases in pass prices, totaling (if I read their math right) 30% in some markets. PPR has been on a steady march since July (with the exception of December, which was distorted by both Polar Express event trains and the starter promo fares at Boca/Aventura). Going off of the March-November average, there's been a steady rise since October (again, ignoring the oddities of December), lining up with the stated pass/fare hikes.
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As a bit of deeper analysis (albeit possibly somewhat redundant with what I've said before):
The last bond projections give 2.46m riders, $27.66/passenger revenue, and $68m on the south segment. I won't speculate about ridership to/from Orlando just yet, but the current track would put revenue on the south segment at somewhere...probably around $45-50m. Current ridership rates (5,416/day) would put overall ridership around 1.9-2.0m for the year (I get 1,976,840). I do presume there's a little bit of room left to rise, but we're up to about 150 pax/train. Given current train capacity this is going to be hard to break, though depending on the delivery timeline for the last 5 sets and/or the next 10-20 cars there may be some upside here. The exact mix of what we see will be interesting.
Noting that Brightline (apparently) plans to start with 9 trains/day to Orlando (i.e. every-other-hour service) suggests to me that they may experiment with some additional peak-hour service down in South Florida before going to full hourly service (otherwise, they're idling equipment). Hourly service MIA-MCO "should" use eight trains in service. Every-other-hour service MIA-MCO "should" need about four trains and the "matching" every-other-hour service MIA-WPB would need another two. So it is possible that Brightline opts to run 1 tph MIA-WPB and .5 tph MIA-MCO (or that they land somewhere in between) for the moment. Another possibility would be that they run extra frequencies MIA-WPB until they get all of their extra cars (or until at least the Miami/Broward commuter projects are complete, if not Palm Beach County's as well), and then adjust service from there. And of course, a hybrid option that adds another couple of rush hour-timed frequencies (rather than sending those trains onward to MCO largely empty due to rush-hour pass-holders filling up seats) but otherwise goes towards hourly service to MCO is possible. For reasons I will describe below, I suspect that something in the ballpark of "6 trains to MCO, 2 trains to WPB" is about where things are going to land: Even the Acela still has schedule gaps WAS-NYP, after all.
Now, Orlando. I still suspect that revenue is going to come in low, as will ridership. Even accepting adding an additional two cars AND hourly service, the simple fact is that the 2025 ridership numbers aren't achievable: Those would require 326.5 riders per train on capacity of something like 380-400 riders (presuming 18 round-trips per day). That's over a 80% load factor on Palm Beach-Orlando. Sorry, but that dog still ain't gonna hunt (especially given the implicit higher pax counts WPB-BOC-FLL). Either Brightline is ordering another 20 cars, adding a few trainsets, or somehow squeezing out additional frequencies. With a mid-year start, 2023's numbers aren't going to happen, either. So, same analysis as before. There's also a collision - South Segment ridership can happen, but not with Orlando ridership. I discussed this above. The question here is "How big is the miss?", and that's down to whether Brightline sticks with the "original" hourly service plan to MCO or does something different.
Just as an exercise, let's take a look at the financial implications of running a train MIA-WPB-MIA vs running the same train MIA-MCO. On a MIA-WPB-MIA round-trip, per Brightline's data at present an "average" train is going to run 150 pax in each direction at - I'm going to use $24.25 (the midpoint between $24.10 and $24.39, the two PPR rates I come up with). That gets you $3648/run, $7296/round-trip, or $14,593 on two round-trips. Were that train to run to Orlando, a single round-trip blocks out two round-trips MIA-WPB. Brightline officially estimates about $116/passeger on the long-distance trips. I respectfully find this to be dubious (and the ridership estimates are useless as well), but let's put revenue at 75% of that, or $87. Let's say that we can pick up 100 passengers going through on average (this gives you a pretty full train FLL-BOC). So, each way you get $3648+8700=12,348 (vs $7296) and on a round-trip you get $24,696 (vs $14,593). Ergo, all else being equal Brightline is going to want to run the train through. The asterisk is that there will be times when all else is decidedly not equal.
