Brightline Trains Florida discussion

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I've ridden Brightline a few times this year. A few notes.
- They need a quiet car. Little kids are loud enough but having a group of Miami Party girls face-timing their friends was pretty annoying.
- I'm not sure why they have 2 people for the cart service? I'm not entirely sure why they even have the cart service since they have the bar and the markets in the station for grab-n-go. The train seems very over-staffed. I saw 4 employees on the train.
- One set of doors was not working, but no announcement was made. When passengers waited for those doors to open one of the employees yelled from one end of the car "you get off up here" - how were they supposed to know that?

I can't wait for the service to Orlando - I transferred from Brightline to FLIX Bus to get to Orlando last week.
I'm hoping that Orlando service in place in July. My daughter is getting married in Sarasota during the month of July and I'm mighty tempted to make it to Orlando to ride Brightline. We are riding Amtrak to Sarasota, though from Orlando to Sarasota, its a bus. I think I would have to drive to Orlando to take a trip on Brightline because the Amtrak schedule doesn't work.
 
I'm hoping that Orlando service in place in July. My daughter is getting married in Sarasota during the month of July and I'm mighty tempted to make it to Orlando to ride Brightline. We are riding Amtrak to Sarasota, though from Orlando to Sarasota, its a bus. I think I would have to drive to Orlando to take a trip on Brightline because the Amtrak schedule doesn't work.
I got off a cruise in Miami and took Brightline up to West Palm and then the Flix Bus to Orlando because the Star was sold out in coach. I can't wait to be able to use Brightline for the entire route!
 
So glad to hear they're using 5 cars on some runs now. How much time do they add in the schedule for stopping at Aventura, two minutes? Same for Boca Raton, just with fewer trains?

I do hope Orlando will open soon; I wonder how much notice they'll give, as I'll definitely come down for the opening.
 
I do hope Orlando will open soon; I wonder how much notice they'll give, as I'll definitely come down for the opening.
Waiting for FRA approvals. Does no more 125 tests mean that section is approved? What sections Cocoa - Palm Beach still need to be tested? Evidently all the crossing signals make those sections much harder to certify?

Suspect that we will just get short notice. Qualifications of all engineers may also be an issue?
 
If Brightline has enough crews and has FRA approval. Start up could come fairly quick. Or they could start partial service and announce it as a soft startup and just make trains longer until everything and all needed crew qualified.
Really like idea of a soft start up. Could need as few of qualified engineers 4- 6
 
If Brightline has enough crews and has FRA approval. Start up could come fairly quick. Or they could start partial service and announce it as a soft startup and just make trains longer until everything and all needed crew qualified.
Really like idea of a soft start up. Could need as few of qualified engineers 4- 6
Is a soft start rational? It may not be reliable enough for folks to book round trips.
 
It should be noted that the current few 5 car sets are temporary, to handle expected high traffic due to events in Miami over the next few weeks. They will go back to 4 after that. I doubt that they will start service to Orlando with extended sets. They will most likely go with standard sets.
 
It should be noted that the current few 5 car sets are temporary, to handle expected high traffic due to events in Miami over the next few weeks. They will go back to 4 after that. I doubt that they will start service to Orlando with extended sets. They will most likely go with standard sets.
Where are the extra cars coming from?

Cannibalized from the newly delivered sets?

That can obviously be only a very temporary fix, whereas the need to add capacity to accommodate special events will not go away.

I think one possible approach would be a mix of extra spare cars, and the scheduling of maintenance around times of high demand so that fewer or no equipment would be receiving maintenance on such days.
 
Where are the extra cars coming from?

Cannibalized from the newly delivered sets?

That can obviously be only a very temporary fix, whereas the need to add capacity to accommodate special events will not go away.
Yes and yes. They have just ordered 20 more cars aiming to add two cars to each set. They can grow the sets to as many as ten cars each if needed, or they can order additional sets. They apparently have an ongoing deal of some sort with Siemens. In general they will not have non standard sets running around once in full service. They are harder to handle in the reservation system and in consist allocation.
 
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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.
 
I have a gut feeling that a 2nd mainline along 528 is closer than we think. I know this was discussed a little before, but the signals are all in place. I can't imagine them installing them for a "potential" 2nd track more than a couple years out.
Yes, I feel the signs are a bit ambiguous. the signals may be in place but things like the earthworks and bridge spans are not. Putting these in later will hardly be possible without disruption (you can't just send in construction equipment to work within literally inches of 125mph trains). This would suggest that the second track is more a long term option, if not a future-proofing, just in case.
 
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Yes, I feel the signs are a bit ambiguous. the signals may be in place but things like the earthworks and bridge spans are not. Putting these in later will hardly be possible without disruption (you can't just send in construction equipment to work within literally inches of 125mph trains). This would suggest that the second track is more a long term option, if not a future-proofing, just in case.
I think the bridges will be the long-lead items. I think ballasting and laying track can be done relatively quickly. At 1 tph (0.5 each way), there's a good chunk of time to work during the day between trains as well as all night long. Curious how many tph would require the 2nd line to be active?
 
Curious how many tph would require the 2nd line to be active?
Roughly speaking when they wish to run more than 2tph in each direction, assuming no flighting, will require some more double tracking to reduce the amount of time spent on single track. Given that they will also need to get more train sets to operate a continuous equally spaced departure service, it will be quite a while before they need to do so. First they will grow out train lengths before taking the plunge on additional frequency.
 
Roughly speaking when they wish to run more than 2tph in each direction, assuming no flighting, will require some more double tracking to reduce the amount of time spent on single track. Given that they will also need to get more train sets to operate a continuous equally spaced departure service, it will be quite a while before they need to do so. First they will grow out train lengths before taking the plunge on additional frequency.
Besides capacity, double tracking can also add robustness to operations, so that, for example, a delayed train will not delay other trains, a problem that could snowball across the entire system, meaning that if Murphy strikes, a single delayed train could throw all of Brightline into turmoil for many hours.
 
Besides capacity, double tracking can also add robustness to operations, so that, for example, a delayed train will not delay other trains, a problem that could snowball across the entire system, meaning that if Murphy strikes, a single delayed train could throw all of Brightline into turmoil for many hours.
You do not need double tracking even for robustness when all that you are running is one tph in each direction. Initially they had planned more double track, and they have built out the signaling system according to the original plan. Then due to shortage of funding they pared back what they will build for now. Eventually when traffic grows beyond 2tph each way. Even getting to actually operate 2tph each way continuously will require additional rolling stock too.
 
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Roughly speaking when they wish to run more than 2tph in each direction, assuming no flighting, will require some more double tracking to reduce the amount of time spent on single track. Given that they will also need to get more train sets to operate a continuous equally spaced departure service, it will be quite a while before they need to do so. First they will grow out train lengths before taking the plunge on additional frequency.
What's "flighting"?
 
What's "flighting"?
Sending multiple trains in the same direction one after the other. It is practiced on the NEC when the Hudson Tubes are operated single track. For half an hour trains operate in one direction and the next half hour in the other direction. Usually they are able to get 6 or 7 trains through in each direction. So the total capacity become 12 or 14tph instead of the possible 46tph with both tunnels operating. If they did not flight the capacity would go down to something like 8 tph.

When you have very sparse service it is better not to flight because flightling causes departures in each direction to get clumped together, as is observed say at Newark Airport Station on weekends.
 
Any additional sidings / main track along the Cocoa - Mcoy lines will require some kind of speed reductions. Would be up to FRA as to what speed limits due to closeness to construction will be. As well, if equipment below track level what restrictions.
 
Any additional sidings / main track along the Cocoa - Mcoy lines will require some kind of speed reductions. Would be up to FRA as to what speed limits due to closeness to construction will be. As well, if equipment below track level what restrictions.
I suspect service will be suspended for a couple of days to install the second high speed switch, in addition to any speed reductions around other construction areas.
 
Sending multiple trains in the same direction one after the other. It is practiced on the NEC when the Hudson Tubes are operated single track. For half an hour trains operate in one direction and the next half hour in the other direction. Usually they are able to get 6 or 7 trains through in each direction. So the total capacity become 12 or 14tph instead of the possible 46tph with both tunnels operating. If they did not flight the capacity would go down to something like 8 tph.

When you have very sparse service it is better not to flight because flightling causes departures in each direction to get clumped together, as is observed say at Newark Airport Station on weekends.
So, if I had to guess here, what you're likely to see is that they'd get to about 2tph (presuming they get there) and then around peak hours they try to time up a "local" (making all the Brightline stops) and an "express" (probably only hitting MCO, WPB, FLL, and MIA) to go through this section at about the same time.

Having said this, getting to 2tph on this section is going to require at least another 8-10 sets of equipment, probably more if doing so covers Tampa as well (at that point I'm thinking...14 sets per train-hour over the route seems about right?).

I suspect service will be suspended for a couple of days to install the second high speed switch, in addition to any speed reductions around other construction areas.
Bustitution on those days (with slower operations if equipment needs to be moved for maintenance purposes) seems likely.
 
Roughly speaking when they wish to run more than 2tph in each direction, assuming no flighting, will require some more double tracking to reduce the amount of time spent on single track.
Are there any plans to go beyond even 1tph?
 
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