I use Uber/Lyft. But as mentioned above you could opt for the bus. Unfortunately Lynx buses in my experience quite unpredictably get bunched up, so every thirty minute service may in actuality look like two buses after an hour
I'll probably go the Uber/Lyft route if I do it - unsure too if I'd do it on the southern trip (would amend my 97 res to terminate at Orlando) or coming north and boarding 98 at ORL. Will have to see what the BL schedule is when they start up.I use Uber/Lyft. But as mentioned above you could opt for the bus. Unfortunately Lynx buses in my experience quite unpredictably get bunched up, so every thirty minute service may in actuality look like two buses after an hour
There is also a bus from the Kissimmee station. On weekdays, you can catch SunRail from either Orlando or Kissimmee to Sand Lake Road and take the bus from there, but the time may not be any more efficient.
I really like that section south towards Tampa where you are racing through the orange groves at 70 mph - very fun!
One very interesting feature on the 528 segment is that the interlockings do not have any connection from the power grid. They are entirely powered by solar panels and large battery packs capable of powering them for a couple of days without being charged. If they wished to get grid connections they would required to install many miles of transmission lines, which they thought was going to be more expensive than having battery packs that lasted many days with the highly predictable consumption, and with properly scaled solar panels to charge them.
According to the route engineer who spoke to us during our visit to the Maintenance Facility at OIA several weeks back, these are pure Solar. No diesel. Power consumption is minuscule at the wayside signals what with LED lamps and such. Consumption is about 3 to 4x where there is a switch, but still it is not that large and Florida has lots and lots of Sun and 10-20kW batteries are not that large.
More importantly, for some of those locations there is no utility power line of any sort within 5 or 6 miles. So they would have to install new lines just for the few watts that these sites would typically consume.
Speaking of power consumption, initially there is one #32 switch on the SR528 route with 5 electric motors to operate the switch points. Am curious how much power these motors require to move the switch points? And a future second similar switch will be west of the St John's River bridge I believe. Are these also solar powered or battery backup?
Since Railway Power Switches can be operated using 12V, 24V or 120V DC power, they could not possibly be huge consumers of power. Typical extended run backup power systems have capacity of 500W or less. Switch motors really are not all that power hungry. They have a small motor with a step down gear assembly to drive the switch throw rod. Even high speed switches with 5 or 6 switch motors would not consume a heck of a lot of power. And the consumption is only when the switch is being thrown which is a short period and relatively far between.
Just gotta size the battery system to last for a number of extremely cloudy days in a row, size the panel system to put a net gain on the batteries when the switch is as busy as it'll ever be on a kinda-cloudy day, and then double those estimates.
I think it's closer to 2-3 minutes per stop - this isn't the Silver Meteor. Level boarding and so on help.
