There’s lots of noise coming from Brightline, the company that is operating private passenger trains between Miami and West Palm Beach, with a goal of eventually reaching Orlando. Yet underneath the noise it appears nothing is really happening.
First, last September, Brightline bought XPressWest, a company that has gained permission, but not much funding, to build a high-speed rail line from Las Vegas to Victorville, California, because apparently a lot of people in Victorville (population: 121,000) have to get to Vegas really fast. Brightline supposedly paid $120 million for XPress, but it isn’t clear what it got for that money since XPress didn’t really have any assets other than building permits; most likely Brightline paid the $120 million in some sort of securities.
Second, a couple of months later, Richard Branson’s Virgin Group purchased a “minority interest” in Brightline. Branson has a lot of nice things to say about Brightline and Wes Edens, the co-founder of Fortress Investment Group and the lead supporter of Brightline. Continue reading
