Brightline is the Florida passenger train service that operates between Miami and Orlando. They have run into serious financial difficulties. Their Miami retail station, one of their main assets, has now ben placed into receivership in connection with an ongoing foreclosure action. And the company has been reported to be soon filing for bankruptcy reorganization, partially due to ridership coming in way under initial projections (even though it has been growing of late):
Brightline is not high-speed rail. Average speed is less than 70 mph for the whole Miami-Orlando trip; top speed is only 125 mph. And obviously their business plan got derailed somewhat by COVID. Still, not an especially positive data point for passenger rail.
I think they’re separate companies. It still might affect the project in an indirect way. I mean, it’s not great for efforts to access capital and financing for a second passenger rail line if your first one has to file for BK. But it wouldn’t have a direct impact.
They’re separate operating entities under the same parent umbrella - Fortress Investment Group.
The Brightline West project shouldn’t be affected all that much. They’ll lock in funding and build it. Potential ridership between LA and LV is stronger than FL. As mentioned in other threads, the alignment is already locked in to follow NB/SB I-15, with minimal land acquisition required. Brightline West is about as perfect an opportunity as we’re gonna get to make HSR work in the US.
We’ll see. It depends on how consumer demand matches to pricing. One problem with HSR is that while it is usually price competitive with driving for a single rider it gets really expensive for groups. Meanwhile, single riders will find air travel slightly cheaper and slightly faster, if you don’t have a checked bag - which a lot of weekend travelers won’t. And like Florida - perhaps even moreso - you’ll have a heavy weekend peak with a low mid-week volume, which is harder for a high fixed cost/lower operating cost system like HSR.
I don’t know. The Florida experience is not a great sign for Brightline West. Their original business anticipated far more integration with the cruise lines and the Mouse than ended up happening. Brightline Florida hoped to capture about 10-11% of existing automotive trips between Miami and Orlando and ended up with barely half that. Brightline West is projecting to capture 20% of existing auto trips between southern California and LV. We’ll see.
Station location is an interesting comparison. Rail station is traditionally in the middle of downtown business district. Airport is often 30 min or more away. Rail is potentially more convenient. But then business and population grow around the airport—usually in the suburbs. HS rail will be expensive due to land and construction cost but does have major potential if done right. And in an age of global warming has major advantage in carbon emissions.
Potentially more convenient for a portion of the population. If you happen to already be in a central business district, and you happen to be going to a CBD, then it is possible that a HSR system would be more convenient than flying.
But for US cities other than in the northeast, that’s going to be a really small part of the population. Few people live in or near the CBD’s in most U.S. cities. And only a modest percentage of people work in or near the CBD’s in most cities. Most of the population lives in low-density, decentralized, auto-centric metro areas - a demographic distribution trend that’s been going on for years and that was accelerated by the pandemic. Neither Brightline project connects a CBD to another (Florida connects downtown Miami to the Orlando airport, Brightline West connects Rancho Cucamonga to a station just south of the Vegas Strip).
The CA HSR project would connect two big, dense CBD’s. But not sure that’s going to ever happen…
Las Vegas high-speed rail project may hinge on $6B federal loan
Brightline’s passenger rail projects in Florida and California haven’t made required equity and bond payments. Can they continue without new financing?
https://www.constructiondive.com/news/brightline-west-florida-financials-private-sector/830649/
WSJ article said essentially that. The Florida income turned out to be abt 1/4 of that expected. Now bk financing will be based on that income. Other investors will take writeoff to make that happen. Sounds like deal is prearranged subject to court approval.
Nope. I imagine the traffic is pretty bad during that specific time. But my point was about price, not traffic. Brightline projects that they’ll charge about $250 (give or take) for a round-trip ticket. It’s about $160 in cost of driving - so for one ticket, it’s not that much more expensive. It’s several hundred dollars more if you have two passengers - and once we start getting into groups of three or four, that’s a lot of money to spend in order to save time.
And of course, it’s cheaper and faster for most single travelers to fly - so a pretty large percentage of the cars will have more than one passenger.
Brightline will probably do really well during their Sunday peak southbound. But one leg, half a day, one day a week, doesn’t get them their ridership. They need to be able to pull massive numbers of riders throughout the service week. And that’s going to be really hard for them.
The way I understand it is that even after riding the train southwest, the customers will still have to sit in traffic for about an hour (at Sunday peak) to get home from the train station. Or did they change that in the interim?
You’re correct that the station is about 40 miles outside of downtown LA. But my understanding from a little googling is that the big traffic bottlenecks lie between the station and Las Vegas - not between the station and LA. There’s probably not a ton of extra traffic during that last 40 mile leg on a Sunday afternoon.
Getting back to the thread topic slightly, the real concern for Brightline west is that the Florida line’s ridership underperformed against their projections so badly. That’s going to make it harder for them to get their financing for the western line.
“Normal” LA traffic for 40 miles is an hour plus. Even on a weekend.
Are there multiple commonly used routes from Rancho Cucamonga to LA that spreads the incoming Vegas traffic out? (I haven’t driven the route since the 90s, so a lot has changed since then)