Two weeks after launching its service to Central Florida, Brightline expects to start operating a full schedule of 15 daily roundtrips between South Florida and its new station in Orlando with train speeds reaching 110 mph, the Miami-based company’s president told a gathering of business and political leaders in West Palm Beach.
The higher speed railroad, which opened its long-awaited 170-mile extension between West Palm Beach and Orlando late last month, sold out 18 trains over the last weekend and has operated at 75% capacity along the segment, Patrick Goddard told an audience of several hundred people on Monday at The Forum of the Palm Beaches at the Kravis Center for the Performing Arts.
It was a promising start for a rail line that ultimately hopes to capture 8 million passengers yearly. The company says it carried a million passengers during its first year of operations five years ago.
Going forward, Goddard reiterated that the company’s Florida priorities are building a station along the Treasure Coast between West Palm Beach and Cocoa within the next five years, and extending service to Tampa from Orlando. But he declined to take an interviewer’s bait about the location of a would-be station along the Atlantic coast.
“That will be our next area of focus,” he said. “We have a commitment to build a station on the Treasure Coast within five years of starting revenue service to Orlando.”
But the immediate future entails adding more trains and easing the throttle forward a notch on the trains’ speeds.
“Next Monday we are doubling the schedule … we are only running about half the schedule at the moment,” Goddard said. “We are 75% full. We will add twice as many trains, which will be hourly service between Orlando and South Florida.”
“The trains are going to start moving faster,” Goddard added. “They’re currently topping out on some segments at 90. That’s going to be 110 in a few weeks’ time. The travel times are going to continue to get better.”
Travel times
Goddard acknowledged he and others at the company have been receiving questions about the travel times between the MiamiCentral station and Orlando International Airport. Many travelers who have driven to and from the Orlando area over the years believe there is not much difference between the times it take to get there by car or train, which are at or more than three hours.
There are plenty of differences, he said.
“The actual run time from Miami to Orlando is about three hours,” he said. “But we stop in five stations in South Florida, and that adds about 15 to 17 minutes to the journey.”
“Some people are like, ‘Why don’t you run an express train from Miami to Orlando?’” Goddard recalled. “Then I’m going to miss Aventura and Fort Lauderdale and Boca and West Palm. We don’t really want to do that.”
He said that over the weekend he engaged a person in a debate via LinkedIn who noted that the drive time to Orlando on a Saturday morning was three hours and 20 minutes.
“And, I said, ‘Okay, that’s not really typical,’” Goddard recalled. “As somebody who for the last six years had to do that drive quite frequently, I know that that’s not the average. It’s a 3-hour, 45-minute trip at best, excluding a pit stop.”
While acknowledging that it’s important for the train service to be “efficient” and “that it shows up when it’s supposed to show up,” he said management is noticing that its on-board service is taking on a greater importance among customers.
“What we’ve really recognized from our guests who have been using this service in South Florida, and now over the last two weeks going up to Orlando, is that travel times start to matter less,” he said.
“It’s really less about travel time and more about the productivity or relaxation, whatever it is you want to do,” he added. “The ability to do work, have a drink, watch a movie, and I don’t think people recognize how exhausting it is to actually drive. The stress of driving, as you are in the driver’s seat, for three hours, four hours, sometimes more.”
He predicted the travel times “will get better.”
“But I think 3 hours 20, 3 hours 25 — I think that’s a pretty good time from Miami to Orlando,” he said. “And from West Palm — for those of you who are living here — it’s about 2 hours 13 minutes, and for the last 10 days we’ve been showing up about 10 minutes early.”
On other matters:
- A $1.6 million grant from the Federal Railroad Administration will help Brightline and a partner Illinois firm that works with artificial intelligence to determine accident “hot spots” along the 235-mile rail line that represent vulnerabilities to vehicle-train collisions and pedestrians stepping in front of trains. On the first day of the Orlando service, a pedestrian died after being hit by an early morning southbound South Florida Brightline train in Delray Beach. Another pedestrian died on Thursday in Port St. Lucie when struck by a northbound Orlando train.
- There are fare programs for a wide array of markets, including students, although Brightline “isn’t for everybody.” Goddard amicably rebutted a student’s premise in a question that travel by car to Orlando from South Florida is cheaper than a Brightline train ride.
- The company’s popular “Polar Express” holiday trains will not run this year. That’s because Brightline needs all of its trains devoted to the new Orlando extension, he said. The disclosure evoked groans of disappointment from the audience. But Goddard promised the company would explore reviving the attraction later.