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Transit Tangents
The Podcast where we discuss all things transit. Join us as we dive into transit systems across the US, bring you interviews with experts and advocates, and engage in some fun and exciting challenges along the way.
Transit Tangents
Orlando SunRail Expansion
Brightline's success in Florida not only enhances travel between Miami and Orlando but also spurs potential advancements in the state's public transit system. As the Sunshine Corridor expansion plans unfold, the discussion uncovers how private initiatives can effectively stimulate public investments and reshape commuting in the region.
• Overview of Brightline's operational success and ridership growth
• The positive impact of Brightline on public transit perceptions in Florida
• The current state and planned expansions of Orlando's SunRail system
• Insights on funding structures for future transit projects
• Exploration of public-private partnerships and their role in transportation development
on this episode, we're exploring how private partnerships can actually spur public transit investment in Florida. Of all places. Check out how the Bright Line's connecting Miami to Orlando and what that means for the Orlando metro area. On this episode of Transit Tangents.
Speaker 1:Hey everybody and welcome to this episode of Transit Tangents. My name's Lewis and I'm Chris, and today we're going to be asking an interesting question in this episode, and the question is is Brightline spurring public transit investment in Florida? It's been really strange to see Florida become the state that has the fast trains the fastest already, and this is kind of another interesting element here.
Speaker 2:Places that you don't think that mass transit is going to do. Well, florida is not top of mind, no, but what we're seeing, it's surprisingly doing very well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and at least the future is looking like it should be doing very well.
Speaker 2:The future's looking like it's going to do really well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so this episode we're going to kind of talk about the plans for expanding Orlando's SunRail. Obviously, right now Brightline connects Miami to Orlando. Orlando has been the recent extension here. Miami has some public transit and some rail infrastructure and whatnot. Orlando not necessarily known for that sort of thing, but interesting.
Speaker 2:I disagree, Lewis, have you been to Disney World? That's fair actually. Public transit at Disney is top notch.
Speaker 1:That's fair. We've had that requested as an episode, by a couple people actually, but yeah. So, yeah, we're going to kind of dive into this in this episode. Before we get into the specific SunRail initiatives the existing SunRail system as well as what's called the Sunshine Corridor extension we're going to start by talking about how Brightline has been doing over the last few years, which is increasingly doing really well, are pretty positive of Brightline.
Speaker 2:You run into people occasionally who don't really support the idea of private business. You know, setting out these rails, setting out these projects. We'll kind of get into that a little bit, but pretty much everybody has heard of Brightline at this point.
Speaker 1:Totally, and now they have 15 trains per day in each direction, which is basically hourly service throughout the day. In the morning it's a little bit more frequent than that even, and then it kind of tapers off at the end of the day. And again, full route right now goes from downtown Miami to the Orlando airport, so there's no like downtown Orlando stop or anything, but right now we're running to the airport. There are plans to extend this to Tampa, which we'll talk a little bit about later. But again, really frequent service. And what's surprising is we consistently hear about like oh, Brightline's expensive and that's kind of one of the negatives of having this more like private business running this, which I think there are real concerns there that that could be an issue.
Speaker 2:Well, private business can charge whatever they want. I mean, look at airlines, airlines can kind of charge whatever they want when they know that a seat is in demand, right. And that's the fear I think with Brightline is like you have this really great public good and they're going to charge $1,000 for a ticket, right. And, to be fair, when they first opened, tickets were pretty expensive. Right, it was comparable to what you would pay for a flight, maybe slightly more in certain days, but it was comparable to a flight, but in certain days, but it was comparable to a flight, but today that's different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I just for a test to see. I looked for tomorrow and tomorrow there were probably 10 of the 15 routes throughout the day, not routes scheduled times throughout the day.
Speaker 2:Tomorrow being mid-February, depending on when this episode comes out, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, tickets were about $44. Some of them were as low as $39. And these are for kind of similar to an airline that have different tiers, right. So these are for the tickets that are non-refundable. You can't change them. If you wanted to upgrade it to an economy ticket that you can change, it was more like $60 or $65, which still feels very reasonable to go from Miami all the way to Orlando, and then on top of that the first class tickets were around $120, which for a first class ticket feels again pretty on par with what it should be.
Speaker 2:I'm curious because I'm doing the math in my head. Like you know, you can probably get a pretty cheap airline flight from Miami to Orlando, like a Spirit or Frontier or something, for a comparable price, like $60, maybe less, but then you have to pay for the bags, right and you have to go through all the process of that airport involves.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at some point we'll do a very specific episode, kind of just focusing on the Brightline model, kind of comparing what they're doing in Florida to what they're planning to do out in between LA and Las Vegas, which is currently under construction. It's not necessarily the point of this, but we're going to share a couple stats here just to give folks an idea of how many people are riding it, because this directly will influence the kind of expansion plans for the Orlando Sun Rail that we're talking about. When you have, all of a sudden, all these people landing in Orlando with no car, do they have to rent a car or can we get them to the rest of their destinations continuing to use transit?
Speaker 2:So if we're talking about Brightline stats, like I said, this project, it looks like it's going really well. It's only seemingly growing in the future. In 2024, Brightline saw about 2.7 million riders, which is a lot.
Speaker 1:It is a lot, yeah, roughly between 200,000 to 250,000 a month.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if we compare those to some of the Amtrak routes that we see, I mean that's it's significant compared to a lot of the Amtrak routes that we see too.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And again, and this is in Florida. Yeah, this is not. This is not the Northeast corridor. This is not like a super, you know what I mean. It's it's. This is Florida. Yeah, like a super, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:This is Florida, yeah, and we're seeing this growth trajectory which is looking really good. In 2019, it was 885,000 passengers. Again, you know, we're kind of getting close to the COVID years, so some of this is going to be depressed to some extent. But by 2022, we got to 1.2 million. 2023, we're at 2 million, and now here we are sitting at about 2.7.
Speaker 1:So, 1.2 million 2023, we're at 2 million and now here we are sitting at about 2.7. So really impressive growth in ridership and with all the ridership to uh brightline. Initially started with uh four passenger cars on each of their train sets. Uh, at that level they were selling out a ton. Sorry, the train sets.
Speaker 1:I just, I'm just picturing like little trains that's like the industry jargon, I think you call it a train set. So they have since added a fifth car to all of their train sets. To that each or additional passenger cars, so that each of the trains will have up to seven uh, passenger cars on them, which is pretty significant. Just to give you an idea of how many people fit in each one, when they were doing four passenger cars, each train could carry about 240 people, which is already a pretty significant amount, especially when they were selling it out when they bumped it up five. That bumps it to about 306 people. And then I'm doing a little bit of assumptions here, because some of the cars will be first class cars versus economy and I'm imagining there are less seats in the first class cars, but estimating to be around 430 people per train once they get this up to the full seven cars per train.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a lot of people being able to move in one go. A good comparison to that is a commercial airliner like a 737 maxes out around 200 people, 200 passengers. So it is a way more efficient way to move large amounts of people and I think that's a good point. To try to segue back into. The point of this episode is okay, we are moving so many people between Miami and Orlando. What happens when they get to Orlando and that is a question you hear or statement you hear all the time about connecting cities by train is well, if the cities don't have public transit, then how are people going to get around? What's the point of the train? Right, which I don't like that argument, but I think what we're seeing in Orlando is a good answer to that argument Totally, and to this end too.
Speaker 1:I mean, people don't necessarily want to get in a car. There was one really other interesting tidbit that came out of this October call with Brightline. They did a survey of their frequent riders. There's a large group of folks who are riding Brightline for work on a regular basis and, according to Brightline, 66% of long haul survey responders stated that Brightline has changed their habit from mostly driving to mostly taking the train, which is amazing. So if these folks are changing their habits there, instead of landing in Orlando and getting an Uber or renting a car at the Orlando airport where they're ending up, if they could just transfer onto another train to get them to their final destination, these people very likely would want to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's going to be a much more comfortable experience If the train is taking a comparable amount of time. You can get up, you can get a snack, the seats are bigger, you can watch a movie, you can work on the way. It just makes way more sense than taking a private car or a plane in that case Totally so.
Speaker 1:That brings us finally to SunRail here. So right now, Orlando operates a commuter train that runs 61 miles, which is pretty impressive. That's also wild. In the north it presently ends in DeLand Sorry if I'm saying these wrong DeLand, deland, deland. And in the south it ends in Kissimmee and Poinciana. I don't even know if it's Kissimmee, is it Kissimmee, kissimmee, kissimmee, kissinciana. I don't even know if it's Kissimmee, is it Kissimmee, kissimmee, kissimmee, kissimmee? I don't know.
Speaker 2:The Florida folks can laugh at me. I don't know Poinciana, I don't know Poinciana, but I know Kissimmee, kissimmee, kissimmee.
Speaker 1:Kissimmee. There you go, beep yeah. So south route hitting both of those destinations on the far ends, with downtown Orlando in the middle. It doesn't see crazy ridership. I mean this isn't going through the most dense areas in general.
Speaker 2:I would not call this region of Florida very dense. You have a couple of small town centers Downtown.
Speaker 1:Orlando has some stuff going on. For the most part, it is the land of suburbia, Right. Even despite that, last year, in 2024, this existing SunRail route saw 1.2 million riders, which again not great, but it's also not, you know. It's a good place to start, especially considering that this isn't connecting a lot of major destinations in the Orlando area. In addition to SunRail, Orlando operates a whole variety of bus routes, ranging from kind of like BRT light routes to just normal local buses. Just for some context on ridership in Orlando, we're seeing almost 20 million riders on their bus system throughout 2024. It is almost a 7% increase from the year before, so it is trending in the right direction, which we obviously love to see. Yeah absolutely.
Speaker 2:One thing to also note about SunRail. We mentioned that it is a commuter line that runs these 61, 62 miles through this region and it gets very close to the airport but it doesn't actually make the connection to the airport which is something very frustrating in a lot of cities in the US is that there's no rail connection to airports, unlike cities in Europe.
Speaker 2:However, you do have Brightline going into the Orlando airport and then you have a SunRail station. That's maybe a couple miles away from the airport, not too bad, but there is a bus the Lynx bus that can connect you from the terminal to that station, right.
Speaker 1:And there's one bus that takes you right to the station. It seems like it runs about every half an hour or so there's another bus that kind of gets you close. It's really not perfect, though. This isn't even like a direct bus to the SunRail, it's just a local bus that makes stops along the way.
Speaker 2:I do like how the advertisement for this, though, is a hassle-free experience connecting you to sunrail, but you have to get on a bus and you have to download a links app and a sunrail app and find the station and walk it.
Speaker 1:Just it's a lot I think it requires a shuttle bus from like your airport terminal to to get you to the bus station it is not a hassle-free experience right, um. However, the good news here is that the plan for the extension to sunrail is to actually make it a hassle-free experience. So enter the Sunshine Corridor. Lots of use of the word sun here we need a good, bright sound.
Speaker 1:As this comes on. The Sunshine Corridor is kind of a we're going to call it a rough outline. Right now the exact alignments here are not fully agreed upon. There have been lots of different potential alignments floated for a long time now. This project has been floated a decade ago at one point. It's very much in. We'll kind of get into the exact stages in a little bit here.
Speaker 1:But it would essentially take you from the Orlando airport. It would go west towards the SunRail, eventually meet up with the SunRail corridor for a bit and have what seems like would need to be like a new transfer station with the SunRail. There's a lot of potential to do some transit-oriented development and stuff like that in an area like that. And then this new line would continue to veer off the SunRail corridor and head further west towards the Orlando Convention Center as well as potential stops near Universal Studios as well as Disney Springs. So really connecting the airport to the SunRail corridor which makes it so you could get up to downtown Orlando as well as to kind of major tourist but also employment destinations in the area major tourist but also employment destinations in the area.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking that too. It's great for employees in the Orlando area if it's connecting to some of the residential areas, but the biggest thing in Orlando it is the tourist industry. I mean, Orlando is the most visited city in the United States, I think, as far as domestic tourists go for all of the parks. If there is any city that has a good use case for a mass transit system and being able to efficiently move these people around, it is Orlando. So having the option to land at the airport and then take a train to Universal or to Disney Springs and then get in your hotel there, that's a viable option I think many people would take.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And hearing, you know right now the Orlando mayor is very much in support of this and hearing him, as well as other county officials and whatnot in the county that Orlando is in, as well as some of the other surrounding counties, talk about the potential for multimodal transport at the airport. You know, seamless connections from Brightline onto the Sunrail, from folks coming in from the airport to. You know, building better, potentially even bus infrastructure in the area. It's just like again I just back to the beginning like this isn't Florida. Yeah, we'll jump right back into the episode in just a second, but first, if you haven't liked this video or left a comment, please do so. It helps us out quite a bit and we also have some exciting news.
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Speaker 1:Let's jump right back into the episode, and it's some positive news here too. So the next kind of step to make this happen is a feasibility study. You do the feasibility study first and then you use the feasibility study to kind of pitch for federal funds. Now, federal funds could be an issue. We'll kind of talk about federal funds in a second here. But a feasibility study for this right now.
Speaker 1:They're saying it's only going to cost $6 million so far, to the state of Florida's credit. They're saying it's only going to cost $6 million so far, to the state of Florida's credit. They're saying we'll cover the first $2 million. Florida DOT is saying okay, we'll do the $2 million. City of Orlando has said they'll chip in $500,000. And then Seminole County has said that they will chip in an additional $500,000. So we're currently sitting at three of the $6 million for the feasibility study already set up. Some of this has literally happened in the last couple days, so this is currently in motion. It sounds like they're not worried about raising the six million, that it's just a matter of having the county commissioners meetings and that sort of thing to get them to vote on it. It also sounds like Brightline may chip in.
Speaker 2:I was just thinking if Brightline would chip in. Yeah, because it's good for them too.
Speaker 1:It's good for them too for a couple of reasons. It's good for them because it can help deliver people to their train. But number two, this Sunshine Corridor, is actually the most likely alignment that Brightline will take in the beginning of their Tampa expansion, so the Brightline trains would actually run along the same right of way for about 12 miles until Brightline then needs to just get on its own track following the highway to Tampa.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's a good synchronicity. What would you say?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a very harmonious project.
Speaker 2:Exactly, it would be a good partnership for them. Good synergies, good synergy, there we go. Yeah, that was probably the word you would use Synchronicity, synchronic for them. Good synergies, there we go.
Speaker 1:Synchronicities, but yeah, I mean overall this is an ambitious project. It's not going to happen overnight here. This is still early stages, but I mean it's really optimistic to see stuff like this happening in a state like Florida. I also think that with this extension you're also going to see positive synergies again now I can't stop using the word but with the rest of Orlando's public transit. So my guess is this would increase ridership on the existing north-south SunRail line and this also could increase ridership on buses, especially if you have more of a focus on feeder buses feeding into the rail stations, increasing rail frequencies and the like. It'd be really great for the area.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's something we should stay tuned to, stay tuned for, stay tuned to, but it is something that will be in development. There's no exact alignments yet for how this is going to go. We just have sort of general destinations that the city wants to connect. We just have sort of general destinations that the city wants to connect.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so while the alignment doesn't have a specific route yet, it's pretty interesting when you look at it just from satellite view. There is like a weird assortment of freight lines that kind of run through this area, as well as a couple wider roads with some right-of-way that could probably be tweaked to sneak this rail line in. There's some industrial areas before you get to the park areas, so they could get pretty creative and not need to go spending tons and tons of money to put this rail line through. It's not like it's through a single family neighborhood or something like that.
Speaker 2:I agree, and Florida's not shy about building highways, especially in the Orlando area, because if you've ever been to Orlando, it is just a huge highway network to get around. There's a lot of right-of-way to use Totally.
Speaker 1:As far as the federal money goes too, I think this is an interesting situation, right, because you know we now have a Trump administration. The Trump administration is not super fans of transit. However, I think that there are a couple things going for this project that maybe they will actually get federal grant money. As we mentioned, a lot of transit advocates' criticisms of Brightline are that it is a private company. They obviously do also receive federal funding. They've been receiving federal funding in the project for Bright Line West. They have received some for the project in Florida as well, because this alignment is going to be sharing the Bright Line alignment. I think that there's a really strong chance that the Trump administration looked at this and says look, private industry is building this rail line. We should invest in this sort of thing to make sure that private rail companies can be a thing. Look at how efficient they're doing it. Blah, blah, blah. This is not how I feel entirely about this, but I'm just trying to put my brain there.
Speaker 2:No Republican governments, state governments in general, but especially Republican governments, love P3s, any type of private public partnership, because it does take some of the burden off of the you know public budgets and it allows market forces to uh dictate how things work.
Speaker 1:And there's there's pros and cons to that yeah, and I would say they specifically like ones that like have a proven track record. Yeah, like it'd be one thing if, if bright line was super over budget delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed, delayed, blah, blah, blah blah. But they have an and I'm sure that they were not exactly on their schedules and everything and whatnot. But for the most part, I think we can agree that Brightline was a pretty well-managed project as far as putting it together and it is currently running really great service. It's overwhelmingly popular. So I think, when they look at that, I think that the Trump administration is not going to be that hesitant to chip in some dollars for this. I could be wrong, but yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think one thing too, reading through some of the directives from the DOT currently, since our new secretary Duffy is in there, going to miss Pete, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip. But one of the directives is to focus on allocating transit funding, or transportation budget funding in general, to places High birth rates.
Speaker 2:I wasn't going to say, high birth rates, that is one directive. Focus on places with high fertility rates it's weird. But to focus on projects that have a sense of positive economic impact. So we have to start looking at transit projects, at what is the economic benefit going to be with this project being completed and less about hey, we're trying to connect these communities, because connecting communities is not the language they want to hear. They want to hear things in dollar amounts. So maybe there's a sort of conversation shift that has to happen around these projects.
Speaker 1:And we do want to do a more in-depth episode kind of about the transit policy and the new transportation secretary. We're holding off a little bit right now just because everything is changing so quickly, but as we kind of learn more, stay tuned for that sort of thing and if there's specific things you want to hear or want us to dig into on that, definitely let us know in the comments.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I think what any transit advocate needs to be focused on now is we need to support Amtrak, try to preserve what we can of Amtrak, but we also have to be open to these ideas of private companies also creating these projects.
Speaker 1:Right, it's either that or just sit on our hands and wait, and I'd love to see the Trump administration throw money at Amtrak and say, expand, make it bigger. But it ain't gonna happen. There's no way it's gonna happen. So yeah, to your point let's preserve what we have with Amtrak and let's see if doing more things like Brightline, or if Brightline wants to expand into more cities, I think we really need to get behind it because otherwise we're not getting more rail right now.
Speaker 2:So, like we said, stay tuned to this Florida plan that is coming out. There's a lot of really exciting things coming from this state. Also, share with us in the comments what you think about the P3s, the private-public partnerships, or what you think about Brightline and how it can spur this development of public transit.
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