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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’s Star Plan: A Discussion with Sunrise Movement Orlando
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Orlando isn’t short on pavement, but it is short on fast, reliable public transportation and the cost shows up everywhere: rent, commute times, missed opportunities, and that feeling that the city is always one traffic jam away from chaos. From downtown Orlando, we sit down with Giancarlo and Enmanuel from Sunrise Movement Orlando to talk about the Star Plan, their push to make rapid transit a real priority in Orange County rather than a distant “someday” promise.
If you care about Orlando public transportation, bus rapid transit, light rail, SunRail expansion, or reducing I-4 traffic, hit play, share this with someone local, and subscribe so you don’t miss what comes next. What corridor would change your life the most?
Why Orlando Needs Rapid Transit
SPEAKER_03All right, we are here in downtown Orlando. We have been riding all sorts of public transportation the last couple days here. A lot of buses. We missed a sunrail yesterday, but we'll get some info here. But we're happy to be joined today by Giancarlo and Emmanuel, who are from Sunrise Movement Orlando, to talk about their efforts in advocating for better public transportation here in Orlando. So thank you guys so much for taking the time to chat with us today. We're excited to talk with you. Yeah, thank you.
SPEAKER_00We're excited too.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So you've put out this uh initiative called the Star Plan. Can you guys just give us a little bit of background on where that came from, what that uh star plan looks like for Orlando?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, kind of like the big thing Orlando's facing um things that a lot of cities across America are facing, where things are getting unaffordable, traffic is becoming unbearable, and we're one of the fastest growing regions in the country, and we haven't really built like you know rapid transit as we should, right? Um, so we were kind of having conversations about like, you know, what are the biggest issues facing people in Orlando, and transit was honestly the biggest thing that kept coming up. Um, it takes forever to get anywhere in Orlando, like a lot of other cities are like, oh, like it takes you 30 minutes to get anywhere in Orlando, right? So um that's kind of where the idea came from. And we were looking at examples from other cities, and we were inspired um by the work that Miami Dave did with their star plan where they identified five rapid transit corridors and they were able to have their county commission um pass an ordinance to like start funding and like start putting money into these projects. You guys will see when you go to Miami that some of those projects have already been realized actually. Um and yeah, so we were very inspired by that, and I think the thing too in Florida, it's a bit tricky because there's a lot of regulations to like where you can get funding from and where you can get revenue from. Um and so the Miami Data example is one that we look towards because it's successful, and they use what's called tax increment financing to you know start kick kick starting the funding and stuff like that. And um we think that there needs to be action now. Our county commission, they're kind of waiting for like you know, our state government to make changes, but that is you know out of their control, or they want to put ballot measures, which you know, with the economy right now, it can be hard to ask people to tax themselves. Um, and so we're really pushing for an initiative that uh you know the county commission can take action now, they don't have to wait for anybody. Um, and that has proven success as in Miami Dade and in the state of Florida. So totally.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I something I appreciate. Uh you all have uh been putting out content on social media talking about this sort of thing, and I'm paraphrasing a bit here, so correct me if I'm wrong, but uh you said something along the lines of you know, if you're expecting our politicians to go out and do this on their own, like it's never gonna happen. We need to take action now to go and do this. And we've seen that in so many examples in you know, having the privilege to go talk to advocates like like you all uh in different cities who actually do, you know, get folks together and and put the pressure on the politicians and say, no, like this is something that we need to be focusing on now. The longer we wait, the harder it's going to be to do, the more expensive it's going to be to do. There is no better time than literally today to get started. So uh in terms of the actual proposal itself, uh, what what are you all proposing with the star plan?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the big thing we're proposing is we want our Orange County Commission. So Orange County is the county that Orlando is located in. We want them to pass the ordinance that would um, you know, set the star plan as like priority for rapid transit. And we define rapid transit as either heavy rail, right, light rail, or bus rapid transit, true bus rapid transit that has its own lane that comes every 15
The Star Plan Vision And Corridors
SPEAKER_00minutes. Um, and by having them set the priority and start the funding by TIFF funding, you know, we're gonna we'll be able to start seeing investments in these corridors that we've identified. Um, you know, we talked to a lot of different stakeholders in Orlando, like the County Commission themselves, the Florida Department of Transportation, our Metro Plan, they're like our transportation organization. Um, and even we've been hosting town halls and we're hoping to continue doing town halls uh all throughout Orange County so that we can you know make sure that the plan is the best possible. The plan has feedback from things in the past and from the people who actually take the transit. So um we're really pushing for this ordinance and we're working with our allies inside and outside the commission to make sure that it happens.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was gonna say um with the town halls, we've had a lot of success, not only in bringing people in. The first one we had was actually not too far away from here, and we were on the news. We had, I believe, what, close to 50, 60 people came. We had like I think 80, maybe 80 people came, a couple of you know, people in politics. Um and the second one wasn't as successful, but a lot of people still came, and it was informative in terms of people who live here day to day were able to see like these are options and they were able to push for it because we had a success where like, oh, clearly this makes sense and we want this. Because before they were like, they didn't know anything about it, and once they went out and saw the different routes that we had planned and implemented and we presented, they were like, Oh, the people want it, where do I sign? What do I do? And they want to get more involved.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's excellent that you're getting the community involvement piece of it. And that was actually going to be one of the questions I had looking at some of the social media. You talked about sort of pulling in information from the community and helping plan these lines. Um, so having those town halls is really great. For the political side of it, what type of reception have you received from county commissioners or anybody else who's sort of on that political decision-making side?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, the good thing, so us in Sunrise, um, we've been doing work for about, I think it's about three years now, and we've been forming a lot of relationships. More focus on the local level. Um, and so we've had county commissioners who they kind of trust us, and like by hearing about it, they're like, okay, like, you know, you guys actually come and show up. So we we've built that trust and you guys are bringing other people in. So we've had many county commissioners who are supportive of the project and some who want to push it forward. Um, and then we have others who they kind of just want to learn more, and I think it kind of comes to the piece where a lot of politicians, right, like they don't know, they actually they wanna they might want to solve the issues, they don't know how to how it gets done, or they might want more details. And so that's kind of we're having this education process so that they can like learn more about the plan, feel confident about it. But at the end of the day, I think everybody agrees with um the quarters we identified that's like hey, we need to, these are the areas that do need rapid transit, and we need to build, you know, now. Like, one, for example, like in Orlando, there's this road called Colonial, and it goes all the way from the east side to the west side. Um, and as of right now, like the east and the west side, like I grew up on the east side of Orlando, um, that's where most people live, right? Um, that's where UCF is as well, which is one of the biggest universities in the entire country. Um, and we don't have that reliable transit. Um, instead, it only goes it only goes north-south where most people don't actually live as much, like comparatively. Um, and so by when we talk about about like, hey, we could build like a BRT or elevator rail on that colonial line, a lot of people really see themselves in it, and it's so many different people, so many different neighborhoods. Um, it connects downtown as well. And so for a lot of people, like they support public transit and they want to see more of it, but it can be hard to imagine, like, okay, but what does that look like for Orlando? Right. Um, you know, Car Orlando, if you will, like it's just car super car dependent, and we've lived our lives, you know, surrounded by the car. But like when we kind of present to people, like, hey, like, you know, help them imagine a little bit more, people get really excited, and then they come up with really good ideas too that help us improve our plan and make it, you know, which I think uh we're currently working on, but we're also working on like renderings for each corridor.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Because to his point, we've had um in our town halls, it's kind of hard for people to visually see it. Yep, yeah. Um, so we want to have that option to be like, okay, this is it for this could be you know the after effect for us.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I love that you brought that up. Yeah, when uh so an advocacy group that we uh met with in Kansas City, that was like their big focus was like we need to physically show people what it is. And there was a handful of architects who are the people who were like starting that initiative. So they're like, we have the the skill sets to be able to like put these renderings together. Yeah, like let's let's use that. And it made such a huge difference. And you know, once they started doing that, they were getting a lot of political support, a lot of support from the community. Um, and like I understand, you know, you're making the point that like if you're if you grew up here and all you know is getting in the car to drive everywhere and traffic, it can be hard to visualize it. But as someone who is like coming to visit right now and has been riding around on the buses, like what I see with these like giant roads is wow, there is a lot of space here. Yeah, like it would be pretty easy to do like dedicated VRT lanes in this, or you know, in the future build a light rail or whatever it may be. So, like while the land use here is definitely like tricky to plan transit around, it also opens up some doors in terms of having all of that wide ride of way to be able to utilize for for better mass transit.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, 100%. And I think that's the thing too. A lot of people don't like some people in Orlando, like they've never seen, like, for example, like a rail or like a bus using the lane in the middle, right? Um, and so I think like even like knowing that very fact is possible, like it yeah, it brings what you're
Town Halls And Political Reality
SPEAKER_00saying, where it's like, wait, like, yeah, like it's like right now, but there's actually a lot of opportunity in you know in that, right? Yep, yep.
SPEAKER_02So in the smart plan proposal, the funding mechanism for making some of these changes, you are identifying that you know, TIFF could be the right um vehicle. I did want to explain to anybody who's listening what a TIFF is, and that is a tax incremental financing, that is a special financial mechanism that cities and counties and other municipalities can use to fund capital improvement projects. It's used for economic redevelopment of those areas. But the way a city would implement this is if you have an area that you want to redevelop, you can essentially freeze the property taxes in that area. So if you have a street that makes a million dollars a year in tax revenue, you can freeze that tax revenue, make the developments to that area, and then all of the increase to those taxes from that time forward can then be used to repay bonds, loans, whatever was used to make those redevelopments.
SPEAKER_03So you all are proposing to use a TIFF for this smart plan. Do you want to talk about uh how that's like being received and uh how like how that would work in this specific case?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so kind of the biggest thing is like in Orange County, a lot of the delays for transit have been because the County Commission has like focused their energy on like a sales tax. Um and obviously, like for us, like any any increase to transit would be good for us, but um they tried it in 2022 and it failed due to like you know the economy and it getting worse, and a lot of people they find it hard to like you know increase their taxes on themselves. And so when we were looking at it, the TIFF seemed like the best way to get things kicked off and started because only the county commission uh needs to vote for it. And it's like it's kind of like a way where it's like you're not really like imposing a tax increase on people, but instead, like any increase that occurred due to increase in property value or like infrastructure, it goes right back into the community. Um, and so a lot of people, I mean, most people do not know what that is, they're like, okay, like what are you talking about? But I think when they hear about it, like people are like open-minded to it. And I think that um they appreciate that it's not like a direct tax on them, but um, you know, they want to learn more. And I think too, like, for us, like we pass we were planning to do like a half mile district, like across the corridor. Um, and so I think a lot of people like that aspect too where it's like, okay, if I'm not in it, like I'm not necessarily involved, and the people who are in it who benefit are like, okay, like you know what I mean, like I'm gonna be a part of it. And so um, that's kind of like the the reception we've we've met. And then I think um, yeah, like people just want to learn more, and like a lot of people don't know about these kind of confusing like ways to bring local money and stuff like that. And I think the other thing is like in Florida, they're actually like debating to like get rid of property taxes entirely or like to have put it on the ballot in 2026, like DeSantis and Tallahassee. So that's kind of been an obstacle for us where people are like, okay, but if they do that, like you know, what are you guys gonna do? Um, and it would only be for housing, so the commercial would stay, so we'd still be able to implement it. But obviously, if we don't have that housing element, it would be a lot more difficult to right. Um, and we're still looking to see what would happen, but I mean DeSantis honestly, like he's kind of even within his own party, there's kind of conflict, so you know, we're kind of still waiting to see what would happen, but it you know, it's honestly likely that it might not even happen. Right.
SPEAKER_01But I also want to say, like, because of that specifically, we're not putting all our eggs in one basket. Right. Um, I think so. Basically, what happened with the sale tax, like he mentioned, um, we advocated, we went and talked to the county commissioners. They said right now is in the right time for it. Um, we are thinking long-term and also informing people that Orlando, unlike other many other major cities, we get a large amount of tourism for you know the parks and everything. Um, they've done studies that around, I believe, if they did some kind of sale tax, 50 to 60 percent will come from the tourists that are buying. So we would pay a little bit but get a lot back. And I think informing um everyday citizens that would vote for hopefully ballot 2028 would be go turning in the right direction because uh if you show them the big picture, right, then it benefits everybody. Yeah. So like we're not just doing the you know the TIFF, but it's also like you know, we have multiple avenues would be great.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Keeping your options open is important, and like I understand too, like if the TIF, if the property tax situation stays similar, you know, and and doesn't end up disappearing, which would be kind of wild if eliminating property taxes. Uh I'll save my opinions on that for another thing. But uh like it sounds nice that you would only need to deal with the county versus having to go to the state or getting like multiple different groups of people all involved who all approve it. Um, whereas you know, some of the other mechanisms might involve more stakeholders that you need to pull in.
SPEAKER_00So 100. And I think another kind of something I'll add to is like I think that what we want to do to start plan and delivering now is that we want to build trust with people because I think a lot of people do not have trust in the government, and honestly, like they're kind of valid for that. Yeah, um so we want to kind of build that trust, especially on the local level, so people know, like, hey, like, you know, there actually is like government can work for us and fight for us, and here's an example of it doing doing it. And I think to Enmanuel's point, like we want to keep our options open, and we even want to like these like long-term projects that we're fighting for in the star plan, like they're not gonna be realized overnight. It's gonna take a lot of hard work, but what we're hoping is that like
TIF Funding Explained Plus Alternatives
SPEAKER_00it will start the investment in the movements that will bring us toward that long-term goal, um, and that people will get to see like the steps of that it will take to get there. So, like, okay, like they're not just you know twiddling their thumbs and doing nothing, but they're actually doing something and you know reaching these goals that we all as a community want to see.
SPEAKER_03So if folks wanna we have we're gonna talk about a couple more things here, but if folks want to get directly involved with the star plan, uh where can they go to learn more, to you know, get involved.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, thank you for asking that question. Definitely check us out on Instagram, Sunrise Orlando FL. Uh, we post a lot of our updates there. This summer we're gonna be going on tour in Orange County. We're gonna be doing town halls all over. It's gonna be the summer of Star. Um, so definitely check us out. Come to the town halls, get involved, learn more. Um, and we also have a petition that you can sign already. We've got 1,500 signatures from people in the community. If you're from Orange County, or even if you're a tourist who is very familiar with Orange County, we need your support to sign the petition. So we'll make sure that y'all get that. It's in the email directly to the county commissioners who we're trying to um get to to move in this way and support the star plan. So any signature helps. And the county commissioners, they've already been telling us, like, oh, we've been getting your emails. There's a lot of emails coming in, so it really does help to make sure that they know that people care about this. Um, and yeah, definitely. Um I think the number is at uh 10,000. Well, like total email sent. Yeah, total email sent. I'm saying I think 10,000. That is amazing, yeah. Yeah, so we've been getting up there.
SPEAKER_01So we have 4,000 change followers on Instagram. Nice, yeah. We're getting up there. We're growing, we're growing.
SPEAKER_03We'll make sure all those links too are gonna be in the description of this video or wherever you are listening so that you can get involved very easily.
SPEAKER_02So for us, we do these cities in a day episodes pretty often now. And uh coming to Orlando, having experience with the buses, we definitely have our thoughts on it. You know, 30-minute frequencies aren't necessarily the easiest thing to uh to to navigate a city with. We're curious about your experiences. How do you use transit in Orlando and how has that sort of helped inform you or or move you in this direction to work on this the star plan?
SPEAKER_01So, at least for me, I take the sunrail more than the bus. Um, I live a five-minute drive, it's actually four miles, so it's not really a long walk to one of the stations. So I take it a lot to downtown or winter park. Um, my fiance works in the Kia Center. Um, so she actually takes it all the time for the games. There is actually a deal that happened for this season, I believe last season as well, with the Orlando Magic. If you had your ticket, it is a free ride. So there's been seen a lot of benefits, a lot of positives from that. I believe a lot of people have experienced what almost everybody here where they get on with something new and curious and they realize it's actually pretty good. Right. I've had a lot of conversations with people who, like I said, never knew that it didn't run on weekends. They didn't know that this year they actually added an extra train ride. So the extra train ride was only for the Orlando Magic games when people got out. But they added it every single day now. And the people have been seeing a response because they wanted it for later, because, for example, some of the stations are near hospitals, so a lot of nurses use it when they get out and things like that. So there's been a lot of positive reviews, at least from my end, but it's only Monday through Friday. Right. So a lot of people are advocating for weekends, and that's hopefully that's the next step.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, to echo that, I think that the you know, a lot of people use the sunrail. If there's any like sports event, like it's gonna be super filled with people. Um for for me, I use kind of the sunrail more occasionally. Um when I grew up, like when I really know I grew up, there was no bus stop near me, so I had to use a car. Um me and my family would have to always like figure out with like how can we like manage to go out with a few cars and stuff like that. So that was always tricky. Um, but you know, with the sunrail, um, a lot of people want it on the weekends. We're hoping the star plan can help start bringing the money that can help also like you know realize that um, you know, more frequency as well. I think kind of the biggest thing with the sunrail is it's really cool because it goes all the way, you know, even outside of the Orange County to the you know surrounding counties where a lot of people live in. And funnily enough, I have like two family members on opposite side of it. So I have one that's uh down in Kissimmee where like a lot of my family is, and then my parents moved to DeBerry, which is like one of the last stops, because um it was cheaper to live there because things would be more expensive in Orange County, and so kind of like that as well, where it's like they live near the train, and now like we we use it a little bit more, but of course, like they're always like if it was on Saturday and Sunday, like we'd be using it all the time to be in the middle to be in downtown.
SPEAKER_03So that's a thing that a lot of other cities are realizing as they you know they have these commuter rail systems that that they really invested in like nine to five transit for people getting from the outskirts of the city into downtown and then back, and then after COVID, that's just like not the same the way people commute anymore. Like, I mean, sure, some people are still doing that, but a lot of those systems that were developed for commuters. Um, I think of like the Bay Area, even like Boston, are now realizing like wow, our weekend ridership is now above what it was before COVID, and they're investing more in weekend ridership um because it's people are commuting differently, people work from home, do all this sorts of stuff. So I do think it'd be huge to have the the better weekends.
SPEAKER_01A good point was spring break here. They saw a because they had a lot of activities near the stations. I believe Winter Park had like um
SunRail Limits Lynx Challenges Choice Riders
SPEAKER_01in downtown, I believe they had a festival, things like that. They saw a tremendous ridership for that spring break, you know, for people taking their kids out and things like that. I believe it broke last year's record. So we've been trending in the right direction. People want to take it, people are taking it. It's just a transition over to we can happen.
SPEAKER_02That's definitely something we've seen looking at numbers from across the country. Rail ridership in general is going up. So seeing that locally also just kind of reinforces that people want it. People want to be able to ride on the rail. Totally.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I'm curious uh on on like so obviously like the rail corridor is is great, but it's it's obviously one corridor. So for folks who are relying on transit, like the buses are are gonna be, unless you live perfectly on that corridor, you're gonna need to rely on the buses. And I'm curious if you all feel this way, but while you know, we've done this in a lot of cities now, and to me it really did feel like the attempt to try to attract like choice riders to the bus system didn't really feel there at all. Like it was like, yep, we're gonna provide this. Now, granted, we did it on a Saturday, so I know the frequencies are gonna be a little less, but it seems like even during the week, 30-minute frequencies are pretty normal on much of the routes, minus like the a handful of corridors. Um have you seen any sort of effort to try to attract folks? Like I obviously it's it's most important that it's there for the folks who need it, but to be able to generate more revenue, get more support behind things like the star plan, you also do need to get people who are currently driving everywhere to maybe you know consider being a little bit more car light, or like I'm gonna use the the bus for a trip here or there, you know, eliminate like a couple of their car trips a week. Um, have you seen any sorts of efforts to try to attract more choice riders, or do you think what I just said is wrong? I was thinking about this yesterday.
SPEAKER_01I was like, You're you're right, but I have seen the effort. Um, I believe this year, um Lynx has partnered with Transit, the Transit app, which works very well uh in telling you when to leave. Yep. So when you take the ride, so you're not waiting out there the 30 minutes to an hour, depending on the route you're taking. Yep. Um they also have switched to, I believe they updated a new app, um, the Lynx. And they also have, I don't know if it was recently, but I know they switched um to make it more efficient to use the like tap to pay. Yep.
SPEAKER_03So you did experience that yesterday. You can tap with the credit card.
SPEAKER_01So they you can see the effort in these small changes and wanted to do it, but to your point, you know, waiting 30 minutes, waiting an hour, right? Depending on the route, it's kind of tough to plan your day around that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think the tricky thing with Linked as well is the link, um, the links like is for Orange County, Seminole County, and Osceola County. So, like, yeah, they have to like cover the entire area with a limited amount of money. Right. Um, and even then there's always pro like, and so I guess the problem with LinkedIn is like they're trying to cover a lot of areas, which is good that they're trying to do a lot of coverage, but I think it comes at the expense sometimes of the quality or like where the corridors that a lot of people would use that um, you know, like in the city core and not necessarily in the more car dependent suburbs. Yeah, um, I think the other point as well I'll say about Lynx that's actually crazy is that Seminole County, so that's the county up north, um, it's like a bit more suburban, that they actually have like cut a lot of their bus lines and exchanged it for. like a kind of like an Uber like service. And so that's kind of something we're seeing where it's like now Seminole County has like pulled their money away from links. And so there's a lot of the dynamics that um you know are changing links like rapidly and kind of like you know making it hard to navigate. But we're hoping as well as a star plan too that we can help um you know work with links to optimize their bus routes um and uh you know ensure that you know people are being uh people who need the buses are you know getting the service they need.
SPEAKER_02Yeah I think we're starting to see that in a lot of places where you are starting to replace traditional transit with this sort of microtransit on demand which we still aren't sure that we're convinced about it. But we're seeing it happen in cities all over. I haven't used it but like I yeah you gotta get nervous when it's like okay well we'll do this one little uh you know pickup area or whatever whatever it may be and it yeah makes it hard yeah it's a story we want to do a deep dive into something like an episode just talking about that but yeah but one thing that uh going back to your point about trying to attract choice riders it does sound like the star plan with having more rapid routes maybe dedicated BRT as well I think that is the recipe to attract the choice riders right when you have something that almost feels like a light rail almost feels like a train and you you improve that experience I think that's when you start getting people we saw this in St. Pete we were just uh in St. Pete two days ago and took the sunrunner out to the beach and it was such a great experience there were tons of people using it tons of people using it for the star
Colonial Corridor Brightline Sunshine Corridor Closing
SPEAKER_02plan if you had to pick like your favorite route that you're proposing that you'd be most excited to tell people about which one would it be?
SPEAKER_00I think for me I have to say colonial um I grew up like yeah on the east side in Alafaya and it would like cover alive. I feel like Alafaya um it's like an area that's kind of like in Orlando where so many people live not talked about it's also right next to UCF and so we could help get a lot of students on the train as well. It would connect like you know other really important like neighborhoods that are close to like an airport and stuff like that. It would connect downtown and then it would connect our like we our west side communities as well so I this is more of an east-west connection. Yeah and it would also cross the sunrail yes it would cross sunrail as well so I think like that's the corridor that I feel like would really help for us to like level up our housing give people more job opportunity then also like help like you know the students like get connected more to our community. So I think uh you know that's the one and there's a lot of also really popping neighbors as well in Orlando that are on there like uh mills and the milk district they have really cool small businesses and it's like an area where already a lot of young people are like walking in even though they're not necessarily walkable and so by you know having colonial like have that transit there like you know it could help us build actually like you know dense communities walkable communities and you know start moving away from the car and towards like you know actually having the freedom to choose which kind of transit you want to take.
SPEAKER_01Yeah I was actually in the mills uh area yesterday you know but it's like you have to drive there once you're there and you find parking it's walkable it's a lot of bars restaurants things like that um but you got to get there first um for me at least I still like the east to west idea but I like the uh sunshine corridor only because the predicted amount of people that would be moving and using it and you know then it would actually benefit because I think if that's gets a great example of success yep would only lead to other things being built.
SPEAKER_03Right yeah yeah yeah and that corridor where would it run in the sunshine corridor is the right is the the one from the airport yeah yeah the sun to the parks additional line okay yeah yep I I guess uh I I have well one more question for me at least I and it's kind of related to what you were just mentioning there with uh the Sunshine Corridor so we did an episode talking about it a long time ago um and it would be a very exciting connection here I'm curious uh like with the Sunshine Corridor correct me if I'm wrong here this would also kind of happen in conjunction with Bright Line potentially expanding over to Tampa. Yeah. I'm curious like what in your opinions has Brightline extending here to Orlando kind of had any sort of uh opinion shift with folks in terms of like oh trains is something we should be thinking more of I mean obviously you already had the sunrail but you're saying a lot of people kind of forget that it's there hadn't been using it they've been doing a better job recently with the sports games and whatnot. I just like curious about the effect that Brightline has has had on people's sentiment towards trains and transit in the area.
SPEAKER_01I think it's been positive simply because when the prices skyrocketed and things got cancelled and stuff like that, they actually saw a shift in ridership from here to Miami area because that was another option. Right. So I think a lot of people compared to flights so I think a lot of people are seeing it as another option instead of just taking a you know a short flight. Yep. I think it's been positive because a lot of people like to go back and forth you know these are very two popular areas um but the con is a lot of people do say it's kind of pricey. Right. So that could be tackled that then that'd be a lot better because like I said a lot of people commute and like for a lot of people who for example I and other people who need to leave for the cruises they will don't want to drive because you know paying for parking they do what I did and they'll take the bright line they'll go and then just take a short Uber to and just wait to get on the cruise. And many other examples like that as well. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah and I think Orlando and Miami are two very connected cities. People are going back and forth all the time uh between them if you go on the bright line it's so funny like you're gonna see a lot of people like from Miami from Disney like coming to the parks really like taking advantage of that. And then same down from Orlando like to go to the beaches or any other events like you know like F1 or any other the sporting like basically just that um so you know it's really I think the Brightland has gotten people to see like what is possible but it's like the pricing which is the only thing but I think that we can get there and it's a start. Right. And I think too it's really exciting that the Sunshine Corridor can help connect us to Tampa because Tampa and Orlando are like pretty close to each other but what makes it seem farther is the I4 traffic. Yeah it like like I think like in reality like we're only like an hour or something away from each other but the traffic extends it to like almost two. Yeah. And so by having that line I think like I think the Orlando Tampa is going to be super successful because even more than Miami actually a lot of people are going between them.
SPEAKER_03It'll seemingly be way faster than driving in a lot of cases. You know what I mean like yeah we we we tried to take the M track the M track was delayed and then delayed and then delayed and then the delay said TBD. So we were like well we do need to make it we looked to see if we could take a flix bus. They were all sold out sold out. So we unfortunately I we had to rent a car and we we rented a car to drive from Tampa to Orlando and it it took like two hours and yeah the train would have definitely been faster than that so that's a clear win.
SPEAKER_01But well thank you both so much for taking the time is there anything we missed that you definitely want to to add in here that we haven't covered or uh do we feel like we've we've covered everything you wanted to say um I think you know for all the folks just like me who are watching this I think it's very important to be involved. Like I mentioned before I think a lot of politicians have said that like right now isn't the right time or that we don't have enough interest. I think the best thing we can do is prove them wrong. You know like show the interest show that you want this show that you know we ride this on the weekends show that we don't want to sit in traffic all the time I do want to give a shout out to our other project Orlando Food Network project is helping with food deserts on that for Sunrise Orlando.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah I think the the last thing I'll say too is yeah like I know like a lot of people in America have been to Orlando even just to visit to go to the parks um and for us in Orlando there's kind of like a joke where there's like a part of the I4 that the traffic is the worst and it's because the tourists are driving as well. We want to get you guys off the road if you're a tourist to make it better for all of us and also for ourselves too. So yeah definitely we need any and all support in the star plan please check us out on Instagram we want to make transit fast safe and affordable for all people of Orange County and all our visitors as well and you know if you're from Orange County seminal seol around the area like you can get involved on our Instagram we have different teams of people who are focused on different things uh whether it's like the you know the people who like to go on ArcGIS and like make changes um to the map and like get into the details or like people who like to connect to like politicians and talk to people on the ground. So if you want to get involved we have a lot of ways to do so. So yeah thank you guys so much.
SPEAKER_02If you have not liked this video please go ahead and feel free to hit that like and subscribe button or share this with your friends. Share it with people in Orlando show them that there are people doing really good work here.
SPEAKER_03Yes if you have any questions also I'm sure we can get these guys in the comments to answer any if you have questions about the Star Plan I'm sure they'll be happy to answer them. But with all that being said thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your friends.