Brightline Trains Florida discussion 2023 Q4

[jis]

Is there any method as to which car is wrapped eg. first, last, premium or smart?

So far they have tended to wrap entire sets but there are a few examples were they wrapped a single car. I don;t think there is any particular method other than how much they are paid 9or decide to spend themselves) for the specific advertisement.

I personally do not like wraps where the windows are covered. I guess they imported the guy at Amtrak who did this to the Acelas at one time and argued that no one looks out of the windows anyway. Idiocy has no bounds.

 

[joelkfla]

I sent this message to "Contact US" on the Brightline website:

"I would like to travel to Miami, but I want to enjoy the view. Can you tell me which scheduled trains are not “wrapped”? Thank you."

Of course, I didn't really expect them to be able to answer it, I just wanted to make my dissatisfaction clear without getting nasty. Their reply said the support team didn't have the answer, and they were escalating it. We'll see.

 

[AmtrakMaineiac]

I personally do not like wraps where the windows are covered. I guess they imported the guy at Amtrak who did this to the Acelas at one time and argued that no one looks out of the windows anyway. Idiocy has no bounds.

I always spend my time looking out the window on train trips but then I am a train geek. On trips I see many people buried in their electronic gadgets so it may be that looking out of the window isn't as big a deal as it used to be, unless you are going through Glenwood Canyon grade scenery which I suspect Florida is not .

 

[jis]

Some news about the Sunshine Corridor in Orlando which will be part of Brightline's Tampa extension. For now it is about SunRail service extension to OIA.

https://www.wftv.com/news/local/sun...hem&utm_medium=trueanthem&utm_source=facebook

 

[PaTrainFan]

About to have my first ever Brightline experience and decided to go all out with First Class between Orlando and Miami. So I made my reservation and did get an email confirmation (thank goodness) but it does not show in my online account and was in my app, but now that's gone and there are all kinds of error messages coming up. "There is a connection error." Called in and was on hold for 45 minutes...as bad as Amtrak. The agent said she would escalate it. Just a rant.

 

[jis]

About to have my first ever Brightline experience and decided to go all out with First Class between Orlando and Miami. So I made my reservation and did get an email confirmation (thank goodness) but it does not show in my online account and was in my app, but now that's gone and there are all kinds of error messages coming up. "There is a connection error." Called in and was on hold for 45 minutes...as bad as Amtrak. The agent said she would escalate it. Just a rant.

Brightline's web site leaves much to be desired. It is really quite sub par IMHO. I have had more than a few less than satisfactory encounters with it.

 

[pennyk]

About to have my first ever Brightline experience and decided to go all out with First Class between Orlando and Miami. So I made my reservation and did get an email confirmation (thank goodness) but it does not show in my online account and was in my app, but now that's gone and there are all kinds of error messages coming up. "There is a connection error." Called in and was on hold for 45 minutes...as bad as Amtrak. The agent said she would escalate it. Just a rant.

I had bad experiences with Brightline phone customer service. I found that the online chat worked better.

 

[VentureForth]

Discovered two interesting things this weekend.

1) Awesome model train store in Melbourne called TRF Trains and MnT Hobbies. Satisfies my N scale addiction. Why post this here? Turns out this was where the Roaming Railfan worked until he started playing with Drones. Staff is awesome - breaking up conversations whenever they hear Brightline come by, though you can only barely see it.

2) Brightline either has a very low horn setting or one of their trains has a broken one. Literally standing at a crossing guard, I could barely hear it.

 

[ManganeseFrog]

Just saw a new wrap: Kissimmee. I would say a very good chance it is in addition to the others. Think they will do all 10?

Also, based on a video I saw, it looks like Brightline has some revenue trains hitting 100 mph on the FEC.

 

[VentureForth]

Brightline's web site leaves much to be desired. It is really quite sub par IMHO. I have had more than a few less than satisfactory encounters with it.

I'd be happy to see some sort of Train Status page. IIRC, they used to in the WPB - MIA days. Honestly love Tri-Rail's live GPS. Don't need that, but understanding their OTP would be interesting. That, of course, could be specifically what they are hiding.

 

[Anderson]

Just saw a new wrap: Kissimmee. I would say a very good chance it is in addition to the others. Think they will do all 10?

Also, based on a video I saw, it looks like Brightline has some revenue trains hitting 100 mph on the FEC.

That would be good...it'd be nice to see them be able to slice a few minutes off the timetable.

 

[PaTrainFan]

I had bad experiences with Brightline phone customer service. I found that the online chat worked better.

As an example of how uneven Brightline's customer service can be, like Amtrak, originally I was told that my trip isn't shown in the app because I purchased as "guest." Another told me, no, they have a glitch right now and nothing shows up online or in the app and they are working on it but have no idea when a fix will happen. I knew I wasn't crazy, I did see it in the app just after purchase!

 

[Anderson]

As last month, two posts. First, the updated data (posted on Nov. 20), short-distance, then long-distance, then combined.

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
2023    March       179,576     4.7         $4,710,278    $26.17    $26.23    6.5     $36.20
2023    April       151,080     3.4         $3,446,135    $22.50    $22.81    4.9     $32.43
2023    May         168,137     3.5         $3,468,666    $20.82    $20.63    5.2     $30.93
2023    June        149,536     2.7         $2,706,602    $18.06    $18.10    4.2     $28.09
2023    July        156,478     2.8         $2,818,169    $17.89    $18.01    4.3     $27.50
2023    August      149,821     2.6         $2,581,416    $17.35    $17.23    4.0     $26.70
2023    September   125,475     2.6         $2,588,549    $20.72    $20.63
2023    October     126,059     3.1         $3,092,227    $24.59    $24.53

                                Filing      Derived       Derived   Filing    Filing  Derived

Year    Month       Ridership   Tix Rev-A    Tix Rev-B     PPR-A     PPR-B    Tot Rev  Total PPR
2023    September    17,578     1.5          $1,479,364    $85.33    $84.16   
2023    October      79,686     7.3          $7,314,378    $91.61    $91.79

                                Filing      Derived       Derived   Filing    Filing  Derived

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
2023    March       179,576     4.7         $4,710,278    $26.17    $26.23    6.5     $36.20
2023    April       151,080     3.4         $3,446,135    $22.50    $22.81    4.9     $32.43
2023    May         168,137     3.5         $3,468,666    $20.82    $20.63    5.2     $30.93
2023    June        149,536     2.7         $2,706,602    $18.06    $18.10    4.2     $28.09
2023    July        156,478     2.8         $2,818,169    $17.89    $18.01    4.3     $27.50
2023    August      149,821     2.6         $2,581,416    $17.35    $17.23    4.0     $26.70
2023    September   143,053     4.1         $4,068,427    $28.66    $28.44    5.8     $40.54
2023    October     205,745    10.4        $10,406,582    $50.55    $50.58   12.8     $62.21

                                Filing      Derived       Derived   Filing    Filing  Derived

 

[Anderson]

Next, analysis:
October's numbers were both strong and yet not (quite) where they need to be. Ticket revenue is currently on a pace that would yield $120m/yr, and all-in revenue would come to about $150m/yr with ridership in the ballpark of 2.4-2.5m riders/yr. Ridership came in almost exactly where I think it looked like it would back in mid-October (when Brightline gave a preview of the month's ridership-to-date). By the way, 2,500 pax/day out of Orlando means that the Orlando station is now the busiest intercity station between South Florida and Washington Union Station.

For the time being, Brightline is facing nasty capacity constraints: Peak-hour trains often end up blocked out either in Smart, Premium, or both due to commuter traffic to/from Miami. The four-car "pocket streamliners" are jammed up with demand, and while that is helping overall revenue, it is also hurting ridership. That, plus losing 1-2 peak-ish frequencies per day, have cost Brightline about 20% of the South Florida ridership they had over the spring and summer. Brightline is now selling around 6600 tickets/day on the basis of about 8400 overall seats (17x/day WPB-MIA, 15x/day MCO-MIA), so I continue to think they are, if not maxed out, at least a bit short on room to grow but so far - I could see adding another 500-1500 pax/day out of Orlando, but with current capacity I think that (or, implicitly, about 250k/month or 3m/yr at the very high end there) is where they are going to be "stuck". Even getting to the 1500 figure would require pretty heavy turnover at WPB. This contrasts almost farcically with their official projections for next year [1] of nearly 7m riders; that dog just ain't gonna hunt.

Three more cars per train appear to be on order (for delivery across 2024-25), which will help, but there's no way to get to Brightline's official projections. Spitballing off of either 205k/month (current) or 250k/month (my estimated peak if Orlando ridership keeps rising and can slot in smoothly with the SF traffic without too much "pinching" at Boca/Fort Lauderdale), each additional coach would likely add about 55-70k riders/month (or 660-840k riders/yr) in capacity. For the sake of discussion I'm going to assume delivery of the cars in June 2024, December 2024, and June 2025. Under a high scenario (250k/month, 70k/month per added car) that would allow for perhaps 3.4m riders in 2024, 5.1m riders in 2025, and 6.36m riders in 2026...still about 1.5m shy of Brightline's projections. Under something closer to the current ridership scenario, that would instead produce something closer to 3m riders in 2024, 4.2m riders in 2025, and 5.1m riders in 2026.

Still, the official projections still have total ridership at 6.95m/yr, or about 19,000 pax/day. I know I've been over this before, but the seats just aren't there. As a side-note to this, there's probably a revenue-based case to angle for another 2-3 trainsets - the "missing" 30k riders/month (360k/yr) would, at current prices, generate about $8.8m in revenue per year, and it seems likely that diverting some of the "local" traffic over to such trains would also add some ridership that is presently being "run off" on the LD side of things (and while there are plans to run commuter service, those also appear to be a few years off - probably starting around the time Tampa service would, if I had to guess). Brightline continues to indicate an increase to 16x/day to Orlando and 18x/day within South Florida, but that is continually about 3-4 weeks out and until I see it showing up a week or so out I'm going to treat it as a mirage.

===== ===== ===== ===== =====

So, what does Brightline need in terms of revenue? In short, about $550m/yr by 2026, to cover both projected operating costs (these might or might not be accurate) and debt service. The current numbers are about 1/4 of that, though with some further growth on the Orlando end and a near-doubling of capacity they would seem to have very little trouble getting to at least $300-350m under current fares. I do suspect that they'll be able to nudge fares up a bit further (if only via a more Orlando-heavy ridership mix as time goes on and capacity increases), so...I'd give them about a 70-75% chance of making it, assuming they can make the ancillary revenue figures work and a 40% chance without that based on current equipment+planned purchases.



[1]

 

[Anderson]

Having given this a bit more thought:
(1) The "projections" for Q4 '23 are already demonstrably off. With 1/3 of the quarter in, short-haul ridership was 126k (580k is projected for the quarter) and revenue was $3.1m ($17m is projected for the quarter). Long-haul ridership was 80k (330k is projected for the quarter) and revenue was $7.3m ($33m is projected for the quarter). Now, I figure that November/December will be a bit better for both months. I don't know if they're doing anything Polar Express-wise, but some extra ridership always materializes over the holidays - I suspect that you have more folks willing to travel at odd times to just get to grandma's - tomorrow, the expensive SB trains are the evening ones, while on Thursday right now I'm showing four sold out trains [though oddly, the other 11 are all $39/each MCO-MIA]. So, 400-450k short-haul seems more likely (with perhaps $10-12m in revenue). It is not utterly inconceivable that they could make the long-haul estimate on ridership (doing so would require that ridership rising by 50% [the current pace is 240k or so], which is a heavy lift), but landing somewhere in the 280-320k range seems more likely.

(2) There is one other point which I left off above, with respect to the long-haul passenger (e.g. Orlando) estimates: While ridership projections within South Florida are perhaps a bit subject to fudging on seat turnover (a seat can theoretically be sold 3-4 times, though I suspect that being sold twice is far more common), ridership to/from Orlando is not (since there is only Zuul Orlando). The chart makes no indications that any infill stations (e.g. Cocoa, Treasure Coast) or service expansions (e.g. Tampa) play any role in their numbers. So, ridership out of Orlando faces a hard cap at the number of seats. At present, that is 7,440 seats per day (248 seats/train, 15 round-trips), or 2,715,600 seats/year (365 days). Adding an additional 66-seat coach would bring that to 3,438,300 seats/year (substitute 314 seats/train in the prior calculation). That does rise to 4,161,000 seats with another coach (substitute 380 seats/train in the calculation) and 4,883,700 with a seventh coach (substitute 446 seats/train in the calculation).

Without a hard equipment delivery timeline in hand, I believe that Brightline's official long-haul ridership estimate for 2024 may end up being physically impossible to meet (and I'd be stunned if they are not aware of this at the present time), since I suspect that they will average out to having at or less than five coaches per train in revenue service across 2024 (all this requires is some variation on the fifth coach being delivered no earlier than March and the sixth no earlier than September, and/or them not getting a 16th frequency in on the timecard - and even adding that only covers a few weeks of delay on the coach(es)). The 2025 estimate is more likely to be "physically possible but utterly improbable" (as even with all seven coaches running on New Years' Day and no interruptions in service, at 15x/day they would need nearly an 88% load factor day in and day out to pull it off, while a late March delivery date would raise that requirement to 91%).

This issue is also a major fault in the long-term ridership estimates in that chart: In order to make the 2056 estimated ridership numbers to/from Orlando (with no changes to the operational model), they would need 21,068 pax/day. Assuming that they extended trains to the existing platform limit of 9 cars (578 pax/train if all the remaining cars are 66-seat coaches), a 100% load factor for that would require 36.45 trains/day (so, at least 19 round-trips) and an 80% load factor would require 45.56 trains/day (or at least 23 round-trips). At no point do they indicate any additional major capex charges for either the additional sets needed for this (either cars or trainsets - this would require 20 more cars beyond the present order for existing sets, and then they'd probably need at least 5-6 of the extended trainsets [45-54 cars and 10-12 locomotives]) or for any other improvements that would be needed to accommodate this.

 

[cirdan]

I personally do not like wraps where the windows are covered. I guess they imported the guy at Amtrak who did this to the Acelas at one time and argued that no one looks out of the windows anyway. Idiocy has no bounds.

That would be OK if only they would refrain from actually selling them as window seats. This is misleading marketing.

A seat with no window view is not a window seat. Call them aisle seats vs. non-aisle seats or something.

 

[cirdan]

Without a hard equipment delivery timeline in hand, I believe that Brightline's official long-haul ridership estimate for 2024 may end up being physically impossible to meet (and I'd be stunned if they are not aware of this at the present time), since I suspect that they will average out to having at or less than five coaches per train in revenue service across 2024

I understand that in France commuters can buy season tickets valid on TGV trains. These are quite costly so not very many are sold, but they do come with perks.

As TGVs are reserved seats only, you can log in with your season ticket and be allocated a seat on any train you want.

However, if a train is fully booked, your right to ride apparently trumps the need to hold a seat reservation, and you thus sometimes see people sitting on the jumper seats by the doors or sipping coffee in the bistro or walking up and down the train looking for a seat that may be empty because somebody didn't turn up. Many peak hour trains thus have an occupancy of over 100%, at least on the final portion of the journey into Paris.

Maybe Brightline will end up doing something similar.

 

[bonzoesc]

Has anyone taken Brightline to a flight at FLL? How long is the transfer? Trying to decide if I do the train that arrives at 7:15a or a Lyft from the Grove for an 8:40a domestic flight.

 

[VentureForth]

Three more cars per train appear to be on order (for delivery across 2024-25), which will help, but there's no way to get to Brightline's official projections.

Can they/Are they planning to phase these in - one at a time, mid-day trains first, slowly increasing capacity rather than all at once?

However, if a train is fully booked, your right to ride apparently trumps the need to hold a seat reservation, and you thus sometimes see people sitting on the jumper seats by the doors or sipping coffee in the bistro or walking up and down the train looking for a seat that may be empty because somebody didn't turn up. Many peak hour trains thus have an occupancy of over 100%, at least on the final portion of the journey into Paris.

I've seen this on the Shinkansen. IDK about recently, but long ago they would oversell. The trains aren't designed for accommodate standing passengers, yet during Golden week (4/30-5/5) or Obon (8/15ish) they were crammed like sardines.

 

[VentureForth]

Has anyone taken Brightline to a flight at FLL? How long is the transfer? Trying to decide if I do the train that arrives at 7:15a or a Lyft from the Grove for an 8:40a domestic flight.

I've been looking at trying to do that - probably BL to FLL then fly back to MCO. If everything is on time, you should be OK, but it's kinda tight.

 

[jis]

I've seen this on the Shinkansen. IDK about recently, but long ago they would oversell. The trains aren't designed for accommodate standing passengers, yet during Golden week (4/30-5/5) or Obon (8/15ish) they were crammed like sardines.

Indeed, I have been on a morning Hikari from Osaka to Hiroshima, crammed like sardines. Was a bit surprised. Never made it into the compartment. Rode all the way in the vestibule next to a door.

 

[bonzoesc]

Indeed, I have been on a morning Hikari from Osaka to Hiroshima, crammed like sardines. Was a bit surprised. Never made it into the compartment. Rode all the way in the vestibule next to a door.

Back in August, I took DB Regio from Berlin to Gransee and back for an outdoor computer festival, and both trains were standing room only, basically shoulder-to-shoulder on the Sunday afternoon run back to Berlin. It was fine, but I'd be a lot more reluctant to do that on a train with lots of grade crossings and a reputation for emergency stops.

 

[jis]

Suffice it to say, since Brightline is fully reserved, unless something changes we won;t see these jam packed situations unless the reservation system screws up, which it has been known to do from time to time.

Shinkansens's (except Nozomis) IIRC have a few non-reserved cars which is where you have these jam packed situations. Brightline could do that, specially after it has expanded its sets to 7 passenger cars.

 

[cirdan]

Back in August, I took DB Regio from Berlin to Gransee and back for an outdoor computer festival, and both trains were standing room only, basically shoulder-to-shoulder on the Sunday afternoon run back to Berlin. It was fine, but I'd be a lot more reluctant to do that on a train with lots of grade crossings and a reputation for emergency stops.

Happened to me once. the ICE that was going from Cologne to Amsterdam broke down and a whole ICE's worth of passengers had to cram onto the following three-car regio train which was already full up, this being at the time of those 9 Euro ticket promotions. The regio train was packed like sardines and there were plenty of people left behind on the platform, some of who blocked the doors still trying to get on. Finally the security guards had to intervene and make them back off. This was during the COVID pandemic by the way, so not really an optimal situation.

 

[crescent-zephyr]

It's really dissapointing that Brightline doesn't understand that people want to look out the windows. You can wrap trains all you want but cut out the windows - it's super easy to do!