Brightline Prospects May Not Be So Bright

The last time we looked at Brightline, Florida’s private moderate-speed rail line from Miami to West Palm Beach, it had killed three people before even opening for business. Since then it has killed five more. While you might think that people will learn not to cross the tracks in front of fast passenger trains, it turns out that freight trains on the Florida East Coast Railway (which owns Brightline) have consistently killed about two people per month for the last several years.

This helps explain why some Florida residents are vehemently opposed to Brightline’s plans to extend service to Orlando. So far, opponents have been unable to stop the train in the courts.

They appear to be doing better, however, in the court of financial opinion. Brightline hoped to fund the extension to Orlando (which will require the construction of new tracks between Cocoa and Orlando) with $1.15 billion worth of tax-exempt private activity bonds. The tax exemption would allow Brightline to pay lower interest rates. But Brightline was unable to convince investors to buy the bonds by its deadline of May 31. The U.S. Department of Transportation generously extended the deadline to the end of the year, but Brightline still has to find buyers.

Brightline’s eventual goal is to carry cruise ship passengers landing in Miami to Orlando Airport so they can go to theme parks such as Walt Disney World. The delay is forcing Brightline to concentrate on attracting commuters to ride its trains in the existing Miami-Ft. Lauderdale-West Palm Beach corridor. But that pits it against Tri-Rail, the heavily subsidized commuter trains now operated by the South Florida Regional Transportation Authority, whose ridership has been stagnant for several years. Brightline is faster because it makes fewer stops but it also serves fewer potential commuters because it makes fewer stops.

Perhaps to divert attention from the fact that it can’t find anyone willing to invest in the Cocoa-Orlando line, Brightline has made an unsolicited proposal to the Florida Department of Transportation to build a high-speed rail line from Orlando to Tampa in the Interstate 4 corridor. This would save Brightline the cost of right-of-way acquisition, but it would still have to spend more than a billion dollars on rail construction.

It helps to restore cialis viagra icks.org the voice. This is said because any viagra no prescription medicine takes some time to show its effect. And now we contain cheap cialis physical exercise and balance component, functional training and education in order to avoid future occurences in the treatment. Many patients develop tumor like growth from thyroid nodules in their throat, which may become cancerous later on. icks.org viagra pill on line Eventually, says Brightline, its trains could go “all over the country,” including “Charlotte-Atlanta, Chicago-St. Louis, Phoenix-Tucson, [and] L.A.-Vegas.” The Treasure Coast Palm is skeptical of the idea, probably because Brightline plans to run trains through the Treasure Coast without actually stopping to serve any of its residents.

Let the Antiplanner go on record that I have no objection is someone wants to privately build a high-speed train from my hometown of Camp Sherman, Oregon (population 400) to my office in Washington, DC. I can pretty much guarantee that I would ride this train at least six or eight times a year, especially if it avoided the delays caused by intermediate stops at inconsequential towns such as Denver and Chicago. I would, however, question the sanity of anyone willing to finance such a venture.

Nearly as insane is the idea of building a 200-mph high-speed rail line from Houston to Dallas. This line is apparently backed by JR Central, the Japanese railway company that operates the most profitable high-speed rail line in the world between Tokyo and Osaka. But Tokyo-Osaka has more than 60-million tightly packed people, while Houston-Dallas has only about 12 million loosely packed. The Tokyo-Osaka line succeeded by capturing 100 percent of its passengers from the low-speed trains that preceded it, but there are no low-speed trains operating between Dallas and Houston to lose their passengers to high-speed rail. I suspect JR Central is more interested in selling Japanese technology overseas than in actually financing the project itself.

So it was with some surprise when I read a headline that the Dallas-Houston train is “on track to roll out next year.” Below the headline is a photo of a train on a “repurposed viaduct” heading what appears to be north from Houston. The accompanying article, however, reveals that the photo is a rendering, that no trains will roll next year, and the line is only “on track” to begin construction next year IF it receives regulatory approval and IF it also receives financing for the $15 billion project.

Color me skeptical. Best-case: they don’t get funding. Least-likely case: They get funding, build it, and it’s a great success. Worst-case: They get funding, build it, hardly anyone rides it, it goes bankrupt, and the state or feds take it over and run it at taxpayer expense.