Brightline will begin killing people carrying passengers between Miami and Orlando today. I hope the new line will be safe, but Brightline trains began killing people even before they went into revenue service and again when they resumed service after the pandemic. Brightline says it is willing to spend $45 million making its route safer for pedestrians and auto drivers — on the condition that taxpayers put up $35 million of it (so much for it being unsubsidized).
I’ve previously predicted that Brightline’s Miami-Orlando line is quite possibly the only higher-than-normal-speed passenger train route in American that could earn a profit. That’s because the route connects Orlando theme parks with the three busiest cruise ship ports in the United States: Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Port Canaveral. Together, they saw 11.9 million cruise ship passengers last year, which is about 15 percent less than before the pandemic, but still quite a lot. If only 40 percent of those passengers take a round-trip to Orlando on Brightline, the line would carry more passengers than Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor carried in 2022. Continue reading
