but when will they be available for service?
Tourists would have to pay the gas tax same as residents. Also tourists would have to pay tolls, and I don't know about Florida, but our electronic tolling system provides discounts for in-state residents.
Only those who drive in or rent a car. They all pay sales tax on meals, hotels, etc. The county mayor estimates 51% of sales taxes are paid by tourists.
This is not necessarily as long a process as you make it sound like if done properly during the construction phase. In the distant past settlement of the earthworks, as in the fill could easily be a multi-month to-year or more long process. Proper tamping of the fills as has been done now for 50 plus years essentially reduces this settlement phase to zero. However, do not forget to deal with the underlying soil conditions as the upper zone, particularly given Florida's geography may require removal and recompaction of the top layers of existing soil and installation of sand drains and other forms to reduce settlement of the existing ground due to the superimposed loads. Once this is past, the track portion can go fairly quickly. First, install a good layer of subballast or asphalt base course. Lay out track and ties, add ballast, lift and tamp with multiple cycles. Run a vibrating compactor down the line a couple times. (In years past, multiple passes of your heaviest steam engines did this job.) Run a test train or two. There should be minimal track tweaks needed if the preceding work was done properly. If the tweaks are more than minimal, put that contractor on the never again list. That process may be complex with a government agency, but with a private entity it is very simple. After the fixes, which could be as little as a couple weeks later, run empty trains at increasing speeds until you are comfortable with full speed operation. If all things track are done right, this could just be a few days. Then, invite the politicians along for a joy ride. (Having been involved in one of these it is hilarious to hear some of these people talking about how much pioneers they are to be on the first train over the line.) Now you are ready to go. You might want to run a skeleton service for a few days to a week or so with all station and on board staff but the passengers being limited to other employees and families to enable the operating staff to get familiar with the processes. This last step can go a long way to reducing embarrassment during the first few days of public operation.
First para: Which is another good reason for direct fixation, that is a concrete based track form. Can't imagine anyone NOT doing a post-tamping clearance check on ballasted track. Usually just walk your clearance trolley through the platforms. If you have multiple stuff where clearance is an issue, equip a full size car with feeler gauges end car and mid car and run it slowly past the points of concern.
Absolutely correct. Dispatch systems as well. Any commuter system if it is going to fail will under the most heavily operating conditions. As Brightline increases service each iteration may find gliches.
Most of Brightline's traffic will be south of West Palm Beach. For the foreseeable future north of WPB is 1tph each way, or net 2tph. Increase in capacity will be in terms of added cars per consist.
Actually getting a little off topic here mentioning power draw since Brightline will be diesel operated. Sorry about that.
Furthermore the height of the floor above rail can be reduced (minimally) by such things as reduction of wheel diameter through wear and re-profiling, and also the weight of people and baggage on board the train pressing down the suspension.
I don’t know what these particular cars have, but in a properly operating air suspension, leveling valves should automatically compensate for this…
I was particularly impressed with this when I took a ride shortly after Brightline opened. I had never seen this before.
This is the sort of thing I was talking about. It bridges the gap. Looks to be about a one inch gap left in the picture, so well under legal limit.
Vertical difference of no more than 5/8 inches, eh? Seems to me that the high platforms of tracks 17-18-19-20 at Washington Union Station don't meet that criteria.
Many, many platforms in the US miss this standard by quite a bit.
Sooooo, for whatever reason, the current plans envisage a stub-end station at Disney.
I think Brightline would want to market a single-seat trip between So. FL & WDW. They're in the business of intercity transportation, not shuttling between WDW & OIA.
Why is a stub end station planned? How do we know that? Is this a done deal?
Probably set by Disney, to minimize intrusion and the amount of property required. Concept art released a year or 2 ago with a brief description showed it. IIRC, it's also been shown that way in the rough route maps released by Brightline when the route was planned to be along SR 417.
That would provide a great illustration of the phrase "Cutting ones nose to spite ones face"
