Transit Tour - Orlando

What happens when you try to live in the real Orlando without a car? We spend a full day riding Lynx buses from the airport to downtown, up to Winter Park, back through the Florida Mall Superstop, and finally to Disney Springs, testing what public transit in Orlando actually feels like on the ground.

We talk honestly about the big constraint hanging over everything: half-hour bus frequencies on many routes, plus SunRail not running on weekends. When the schedule is that thin, every transfer becomes high-stakes, and a single missed connection can flip your whole plan. We also run into a classic reliability gut-punch, the “ghost bus,” and compare what different apps and printed signs claim versus what shows up at the curb.

If you enjoy detailed transit travel and real-world city rankings, subscribe, share this with an Orlando friend, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

Orlando Transit From The Airport

0:18

Today we are in the most magical transportation place in the world, which is Orlando, Florida. Yes, uh very well known for its robust public transit network here. You have monorails, you have ferries, you have little trains on roller coaster tracks and rafts in the flu network if you go to some of the Harry Potter stuff. Unfortunately, outside of the parks, we're mostly left with the most common form of public transportation, which is buses. And I say unfortunately, uh, which I shouldn't, because I think buses are a really valuable tool. We just took our first bus of the day here, the number 42, from near the airport, here to Sand Lake Road Station. Sand Lake Road Station is one of the stations on the Sunrail corridor here, which is a north-south kind of commuter rail service here in Orlando. And we talked about the Sunrail on a previous episode, and so we did talk about this station. If you were to fly into Orlando and you really wanted to use only public transit, this would be your best option of really getting back into downtown Orlando on weekdays. The station's very close to the airport, and there is direct service uh via bus shuttle uh from the airport terminals to here. Yes, and in the future too, and we talked about this on the past episode, Sunrail is looking to expand, which is really exciting. So right now it's just this one north-south line. Uh in the future, there are plans to connect uh an east-west line that goes from the airport here in Orlando, connect for a transfer station right around here. In reality, a transfer station would likely be built south of here. And then continue to head further west towards uh some of the uh parks here with Universal and Disney, the convention center, that sort of stuff. Um, kind of in conjunction with the potential expansion of Bright Line headed over to Tampa. So a lot of really exciting stuff. We went in depth in it in a previous episode, which we'll make sure is linked if you're interested in checking that out. Unfortunately, we are here on a Saturday, which means that the train, the Sunrail, is not actually running. Womp. Which, if we had watched our own video, we probably would have known. We were expecting to catch it this morning. We were this has been a very busy couple weeks, I think, for both of us. So yeah. So instead, we are gonna catch the number 18 bus and take that into downtown Orlando. Yes, and a lot of buses here that we're gonna find today are running on half-hourly schedules. This is a nice situation right now where there are kind of two routes that run alongside each other, kind of like interline up this kind of corridor headed further north here. So there's the 11 and the 18. Uh, we just were we would have been able to catch the 11 barely, but we wanted to be able to check out the station here. So uh it was only about an extra 15 minutes or so for us to wait here to catch the 18. So uh let's hop on the 18, and that'll take us right to downtown Orlando and their central bus station. This is the second video in our ongoing series covering public transportation in Florida. Last week's episode featured St. Pete's Sunrunner, and still to come are interviews with local advocates here in Orlando, Miami using only public transit, and an interview with Kathy from Transit Alliance Miami. Make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss those when they come out. We took

Lynx Bus 18 Into Downtown

3:19

the 18 bus from the Sandy Lake station, which uh also connected with the Sunrail. We're actually standing at the Sunrail platform in downtown Orlando now. Uh, we took that 18 bus all the way up to downtown, and all in all, the bus was fast. Uh, it was really heavily ridden. Yeah. There's a lot of passengers getting on and off, and we're doing this on a weekend, so that also sort of surprised us just for the sheer number of passengers. It was like right on time as well, and the uh the the previous bus we took to get there was only three minutes behind schedule as well. So so far things have been moving pretty efficiently to be able to get us here to downtown. It is a little funny that we are at the the rail station here again, just considering that we would have been able to take the train here uh if it were a weekday, but that's okay. Uh overall the the bus was packed. Yeah. I mean, it was it was very busy. Also, the drivers are ripping through town. Yes. Yes. Uh Orlando's so spread out, I feel like they have to just continually like press on the gas to get uh wherever they're going. And it's I mean it's appreciated, otherwise you would be stuck quite a ways. I mean, when you look at the map, it feels like it's gonna take forever because of how many stops there are, but because of how not dense everything is, there's really not many people getting on or off at each stop. Um obviously, as we got closer to downtown, that started to improve, but in terms of people getting on and off, but uh yeah, pretty wild to see. Um

A Better Bus Terminal Than Expected

4:40

something else that's interesting. We're standing here at the central bus terminal, and it's just really a pleasant experience. The design, colors, it's something I've been talking to Lewis about. It kind of feels like the Disneyfication of Orlando. Yes. The signage here feels like you're going into an amusement park. When you walk into the main terminal, there's this giant screen and everything is just kind of feels like it was designed. Very like wavy features. The buses are all very colorful, very colorful. It just feels like it was designed to help move people, which it was. I mean, that's obviously what the design of it is, but to help move people in a way that like Disney and Universal and other companies like that have really mastered. Yeah. Also, just the sheer size of this bus station downtown. I I don't know. In a basically every other city we've been to, you don't have a I don't I don't want to say this the wrong way, but like a nice downtown bus station. Like occasionally you have like the central bus station, and it's usually a couple buses going in and out of there, and it's usually like not the nicest seeming place. And like, I mean this isn't perfect by any means, it's not like fancy, but there are I don't even know. I mean, there's probably 30 bus bays here, maybe more than that. Uh tons of them pulling in and out all the time here, and some of it just definitely has to do with how expansive everything is here. Like things are far apart, but so far it's worked better than I thought it would. I was not optimistic going into the morning here. Yeah, um, but we'll see if that continues for us. From here, we are gonna check out some of what is here in downtown Orlando. They do operate a free circulator system here, so we'll probably do a mix of walking and checking out that circulator before catching our next bus, which we'll leave from this station. Yeah, check out this uh 500-foot BRT in downtown Orlando. Now, this is a really cool separated bus lane that gets the buses directly into the downtown station, uh completely separated from traffic, and it made for like a really smooth transition going from traffic and then into the station. Yes. It also does kind of wrap around to the other side of the building a little bit too. There was one on the other end, so yeah, it would it does suck to be stuck for the last like you know couple hundred yards of your journey if you're just sitting there waiting. So also it being separated from traffic allows the buses to pull in and out without having to wait for that cross traffic, which I think is the real design here. Totally. Wow, this is a nice little It's actually a nice station, yeah. A little lean bar. Uh their their uh circulator is called the Limo. A little silly. Oh, it's not. I thought it was Limo. Was it Limo? Limo. Limo makes more sense, yeah. Uh Limo. So they're they're doing some construction right now, but it does seem that the Limo downtown circulators actually have some dedicated lanes. Hopefully, this construction is not to remove those. But interesting to see it.

Lake Eola And The Free Lymmo

7:26

Alright, so we've been walking around downtown Orlando a bit, and we are now in Lake Iola. Well, we're not in Lake Iola. Sorry, we are next to Lake Iola in the park. I will say I would like to be in it. It is getting very hot outside right now, and the water looks eh, and now I look that way and it's less inviting, but it's it's a nice color. More what about the alligators? Yes, fair. Um, we actually will be back in this park tomorrow. We've got an interview lined up with a couple advocates, transit advocates uh from Orlando, and we'll be talking to them about all sorts of things here. So if you haven't seen that episode already or if it hasn't come out yet, uh definitely keep an eye out for it. We'll make sure there's a link in the description of this video. From here, we are gonna try to find the nearest uh limo stop to catch one of the circulators to go back toward the central station, and then we're gonna start moving out away from downtown. The plan was to walk through downtown a bit away from the station and then to catch the circulator back to the central station. Unfortunately, due to some road construction, we missed the bus we were hoping for due to a detour. To be able to catch our next bus out without having to wait another half an hour, we just decided to walk back to the station. Overall, though, Orlando operates three limo routes that are fare-free. There are portions of the routes downtown with dedicated lanes, and during the week they run at peak frequencies of every 15 minutes.

Taking The Bus To Winter Park

8:44

We are in the transit app, and we are gonna go from downtown Orlando over to Winter Park. So we just put it into the app. Winter Park. We're leaving now. There is a bus in six minutes. We're gonna take the 102. Like basically every bus today, this route only runs every 30 minutes. We caught it right on time back at Lynx Central Station. Alright, we made it to Winter Park. Doesn't feel very wintery. It doesn't. Also, I feel like this is gonna be a gag. Every time you point to me, I'm just gonna have more sunglasses on top of me. So, overall, another pretty smooth bus. And uh yeah, I mean we left that bus terminal again and you know, lots of buses all leaving at the same time. Left right on time. We haven't had a bus that's not been on time all day today. Everything's actually been really great. Smooth um ridership is also still pretty high. Even here we are, it is uh one o'clock on a Saturday, and we're still seeing a lot of people uh riding the bus. Yeah, I mean it's definitely surprising, uh, especially again considering these are only every half an hour for the most part. So I mean maybe that is why there's so many people, is because people are kind of waiting, but um, seems like they could benefit from actually having uh a bit more in terms of frequency. Yeah. But we're gonna check out downtown Winter Park here uh and we'll catch up with you after we eat some lunch. If you haven't liked this video yet, please do. It helps get the show to new people. Alright, so we are back at the downtown transit center. Everything seems very centralized. Recurring theme of the day, yes. Uh we just made it back from Winter Park. Again, caught that half-hourly bus back here. Um it was a couple minutes late this time, maybe five minutes or so, but nothing too dramatic, I feel like. Uh yeah, way better than anything else we've really experienced. Well, than most things we've experienced in other cities.

Paying Fares And Chasing Frequency

10:37

Another thing that we noticed um with the tap and pace system, they're not registered as an official Transit Express partner with Apple. So if you're trying to use like your phone to just quickly tap without having to do any type of face verification, does not seem to work. However, tapping with your card or using your face ID before tapping your phone, all that seems to work pretty seamlessly. The thing that we noticed that would have worked fine on my Android phone. Oh hush. Another thing we noticed uh is that they don't really have a true fair capping system for the Lynx bus. So you could take six trips and it's gonna cost you around $12. Right, $2 a trip. There is a way to get a day pass, but you have to seemingly like go and find a machine or something because even in the app that they have, it wouldn't allow us to buy a day pass, which was kind of interesting. Yeah. So day passes seem to be the closest thing to a fair cap price that you're gonna get. Otherwise, you'll just keep racking up prices. Keep racking up your bill. That's what he's trying to say. Uh the only other thing I wanted to point out was uh along the route to Winter Park, there was also a decent amount of TOD that seemed to be happening around the only other thing we wanted to mention uh along this part of the day. On the ride up to Winter Park, there was actually quite a few cute little town centers along the way, as well as some TOD happening around some of the sunrail stations are kind of close to them. Uh, you also had a hospital on the line, that Advent Health Station. Um, a couple of healthcare workers also kind of got on our bus at that station because again, the sunrail is not running today. So um, overall, pretty positive experience. But again, the half hour frequencies do leave something to be desired and kind of like in a weird way has you rushing around a little bit more because the risk of missing the half an hour bus, it I mean, it sucks. Like, you don't want to miss it. Do they get better on the weekdays? Most of them don't. Yeah. Yep. So there are during the weekdays, there are a handful of 15-minute buses, but basically this half an hour frequencies is what folks in Orlando are living with on a regular basis. So we had our first uh our first ghost bus. First ghost bus happened. Waiting for the 107 at the downtown transit center, and it said that it was available on Apple and Google Maps, but Transit App said that it was not, and that we should take the 7, which we are waiting to board now. Which was another 15 minutes behind schedule. So we'll see. Maybe we spoke a little too soon earlier when we were like, Orlando's great, everything's on time. Yes. The frequencies were not good earlier, but the on-timeness was. But this one, and despite Transit App not saying this thing, it does say it on a printed sign over here, so it really should have come. But we'll see. Florida Mall, superstop. It is a superstop, that's for sure. Yeah. So our bus finally came at the downtown transit center, the seven. Uh, we've now taken that further south from downtown to the Florida Mall Superstop. Yes, uh, this is definitely like a big transfer hub in this part of the city. Uh, and eventually from here we're gonna catch a bus to Disney Springs. So this seems like if you were to live south of Orlando, a lot of buses funnel into this area, um, and then you can kind of transfer to either get into downtown or head out to any of the big parks if you're working there, things like that, uh, to be able to get into work. So um, we'll catch one of those buses shortly. There are quite a few buses running both as express service and local service between downtown Orlando, Disney, and Universal. Uh-huh. For the most part, these are aimed towards transporting staff, but I'm sure some visitors also use the service. In the future, some of these trips could be better served by a Sunrail expansion to the Sunshine Corridor. This is something we discussed with transit advocates from Sunrise Orlando. That episode will drop Thursday on Patreon and for YouTube members and will come out in a few weeks on YouTube. Well, we

Florida Mall Hub To Disney Springs

14:40

just had a very long day. Yes, we have. Uh, we just finished up at the Florida Mall where we took the 311 all the way over to Disney Springs, where we're going to officially end the day. Yes, there are, just to talk a little bit about the station down here, there are quite a few buses that can get you out here to Disney Springs, as well as uh the bus we were just riding also made stops uh at Universal as well, as well as at some transit centers in the area. So you have that bus option, and then there are also more direct buses that run from that same downtown transit center that we couldn't get away from all day today, uh that run right here, and they are among the more frequent buses uh in the system. Makes a lot of sense when you consider how many people actually work in this part of Orlando. And how many tourists might be using the public transit to get down to the parks and this area. Uh, it's no secret. Disney also has a massive transportation system on its own. In fact, on the way into Disney Springs, we saw what I have nicknamed DRT, which is Disney Rapid Transit, where they have center running uh sort of DRT for their park buses and a massive transfer station. So if you are using public transit and you want to go to the Disney parks, you can also come to Disney Springs, and there's plenty of options from here. So it has been a long day. We have traveled from the airport to downtown to Winter Park to back downtown to the mall to here. So we are exhausted. Yes. Um, but we have had a lot of experience with transfers and uh seeing what you know trying to use public transit to get around Orlando is actually like.

Ranking Orlando Against Other Cities

16:12

And one thing that we are continuing to do, and we haven't done this for quite a while, but that is to rank U.S. cities based on our experience and where they line up in the best transit system. So we have done 11 cities so far. And before we get into actually doing the ranking, I think we should try to do some like what were some of our highlights and lowlights from here. So to me, uh again, it we did film this on a Saturday, so a little bit of leeway here, but there were no buses running that were better than half an hour frequencies, with the exception potentially of some of the downtown circulators. Um, that does change a little bit during the week when we were looking at it, but not dramatically. There are a handful of buses with 15-minute frequencies, but unless you live in uh the the exact right areas here, you're gonna be relying on half-hour frequency buses if you're trying to navigate Orlando. And that is just not it's not good. No, and the city's so spread out that makes getting around very difficult. Another thing that's going to count against Orlando is that the sun rail doesn't actually run on the weekends, which is really unfortunate just considering that commuting patterns nowadays have changed and more people are looking to use public transit on the weekends to get around their city. And honestly, the sun rail does have a very, I'd say like a long coverage, not say wide coverage, but it goes pretty far north-south in the city, connects a lot of really big destinations. We definitely would have been on it multiple times today if it had been running. Yeah, and uh like we've seen in so many cities, and we've talked about it on the show, that in some cases commuter rail ridership is is like going up very dramatically on the weekends, and they're running more service on the weekends than they are during the week. Just again, the you know, remote work and you know being able to work from home some days of the week or whatever it may be. People are using transit for different trips than they would have used it before. So uh yeah, a little disappointing in that regard. A couple other things that we noticed. Uh, it was nice to have tap to pay with your credit card on the buses, it does help speed things up. Uh I do wish it worked with the Apple Transit pass, like the one that makes it very fast for you to just tap your phone and go. That did not work on the buses. Yeah. One thing that definitely did eat up some time, a lot of people were paying cash, which is like fine and normal, but it does take quite a bit of time to like unroll, you know, your dollar bills and put them in or drop in quarters. The machine wasn't taking a lot of the money, so like oftentimes the driver was like taking the money from the people and then like feeding it into the thing later, just trying to get the bus moving still. Uh, and it is frustrating just like sitting there while people are trying to sort out doing that. But definitely at the beginning of the day, we also felt like the reliability of the buses was a little stronger. Everything seemed to be running pretty well on time. The bus drivers were just ripping through the city. Yes. As we moved further into the day, we did see more delays with buses. We saw uh us being uh ghost busted. Ghost busted. Oh my gosh. Ghost ghost busted. We saw ourselves getting busted is more ghost busted. Anyway, we did uh experience a ghost bust as well, but again, overall, you know, I better than I expected. Um to get back to your point though, now on where it lies in the rankings, I think we can pretty safely say it is not in the top half of the cities we have done. Uh we've done, what did you say, 11 cities, uh 11 US cities. We have done 11 U.S. cities that we have ranked, and if we're talking about the top half, just as a recap, we did rate Boston as number one, uh, followed by DC. We really actually rated those as tied with each other. Kind well, ish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we had uh Boston and DC, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Salt Lake City, Dallas, Houston, Austin. So now we have a couple cities below that that we have to figure out where Orlando fits. Right. So below that, right now we have San Antonio, we have Kansas City, and we have New Orleans. Now, uh San Antonio, if you'll go back to that episode, it is only buses. Yes. So uh Orlando does have a slight leg up having the sun rail as an option, but again, weekdays only, one line every half an hour when it is operational, isn't a huge value add to me. And San Antonio's bus network is you know, San Antonio is also a very sprawling city, very expensive. If you're gonna compare the cities themselves, there's a lot of similarity between San Antonio and Orlando just by sheer sprawling size. Yeah, but San Antonio manages to run a lot more frequent buses than Orlando does, even if you use Orlando's like weekday schedule versus what we were seeing today, because I mean that their 15-minute network is much more expensive in San Antonio. Yep. When we compare it to cities like Kansas City, uh we do have a very soft spot in our heart for Kansas City. We absolutely love the people there. They have the light rail that runs through the middle of the city uh that has now gone through an expansion and in a second expansion the route's open. However, I don't personally feel like their bus coverage is quite enough to compete with Orlando. Yeah, I I disagree a little bit. Like I think that they're pretty close. Uh we'll see ultimately where we where we put it on the list, but I mean Kansas City does have their max lines. Like, I didn't see a clear equivalent to like the Kansas City Max lines here, which are branded as like, hey, these are the reliable buses you should be taking. When we were at the major bus terminal earlier today, it wasn't like, oh, these are the main buses. It was just a huge, like kind of chaotic mess of like, here's all these different buses. The bus terminal was cool, but there was just a lot of information that was kind of tricky to piece together. Orlando could definitely use from having more BRT or some type of rapid style service that is clearly labeled and goes to some of the destinations that we went to today. And then if we want to compare this to New Orleans, well New Orleans is a very nice city. And New Orleans is something entirely on its own. The transit was uh the streetcar was cool for a historic streetcar. Uh uh the butt we just we didn't have good luck with buses when we were there. So uh I think I think that one's pretty safe to say that that's probably gonna stay in the number the bottom spot. The bottom spot. Definitely will be 12 at this point. Uh so I think we kind of agree on where Orlando's gonna sit. Ish, I'm I'm conceding my position to you on it, I think, a little bit. I mean I I I uh it's close enough in my mind that I'm okay putting it here. So officially we are going to rank Orlando as number 10 out of our 12 cities, 12 U.S. cities that we have covered so far. Yes. It is number 10 just behind San Antonio and just ahead of New Orleans and Kansas City. Yes, and there is a lot of potential here, which could bring Orlando up the list. Again, in previous episodes, we have talked about the potential for sunrail expansions, which would add a east-west line to the system, connecting the airport to the existing sunrail system, and then eventually running all the way out to not exactly right here, but with stations kind of near the convention center, Universal, or Disney Springs, uh, which would make connectivity through the area much better. Bright line is also a major you know benefit here. Again, right now, being out at the airport, it feels a little silly, but um, once that eventually connects through here as well, there's a ton of potential. So we'll see maybe in the future, Orlando will climb up this list. Yeah. Next on our city tour list, we are actually going to be heading to Miami to experience some exciting BRT people moving systems, buses, uh brand line. An actual heavy rail metro system. Yeah. So we are really excited to go check out Miami and see where that falls on our

Future Upgrades And Final Thanks

23:29

list. If you like this episode, please feel free to go ahead and subscribe, share it with your friends, share it with the Orlando folks. They may hate us for saying that Orlando's so far down the list, but maybe they agree with us. My guess is a lot of them probably will agree with us because I would imagine waiting half an hour for buses all the time would drive you mad. Uh, again, there's also gonna be great content coming out with some Orlando-based advocates. If you have not seen that already, be sure to stay tuned on the channel for that. If you want to support the show directly, the best ways to do so are via our Patreon, checking out our merch store, or buy us a coffee link down below. But with all of that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit Tensions Tuesday.