By Simon Warburton
Brightline runs 30 return services a day from Orlando to Miami. Image: Courtesy Brightline.
American private train operator, Brightline, boldly claims it will remove 3m car journeys per year as its high-speed Florida rail services from Orlando Airport to Miami start to embed themselves in the transport mix.
Linking the central Florida theme parks to the water playground of Miami with a rail track distance of 235 miles, the $5bn investment will be fascinating to watch if it can persuade Americans – notoriously wedded to four wheels and commercial flights – to ditch cars and aircraft in favour of trains.
But just how far the US has to go in terms of high-speed (and from my British perspective we’re in no position to give the Americans any lessons, having just capitulated by abandoning our own swift link from Birmingham to Manchester), can maybe gleaned by the fact the Brightline Orlando journey starts at the airport.
If it’s one thing Americans like to do as well as drive, it’s fly, so maybe there’s a logic to basing the service out of Orlando Airport, but to be genuinely city centre to city centre, it surely one day has to originate in downtown Orlando.
The Brightline route – to British ears at least – sounds impossibly glamorous: Orlando, West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Aventura and Miami Central with anecdotal stories noting the journey can take around 3h30 if delays for signalling or crossings occur, but around 3h if not.
A top speed of 125mph is possible – some way off the TGV and Shinkansen speedsters – but a decent lick nonetheless and not a traffic jam or airline cancellation in sight.
And it’s that ease of journey which Brightline stresses in its promotion of the service, often repeating the phrase “too close to fly and too long to drive” to emphasise Orlando-Miami as the optimum distance to use the train.
Trains feature components from 160 suppliers in 27 States
Can you complete a day-return journey for work purposes? Dummying in a trip on 22 November, there is a Brightline service departing Orlando at 06:38, arriving into Miami at 10:11 with a return leg leaving at 18:46 and ending back in Central Florida at 22:19, so yes, it’s perfectly possible.
Cost is $238 (£194) return in what Brightline terms its Smart or economy car, while the same journey would see you parting with $538 (£439) in Premium or business class.
What will the passenger see for the $300 difference? Well, apart from probably a quieter carriage, there are a raft of benefits including wider seats (21 inches compared to 19 inches in Smart), free snacks, drinks and a Premium lounge (including conference room access).
The lower Smart fare gives passengers complementary wi-fi, USB outlets at each seat, as well as on-board drinks and snacks available for purchase.
The trains are produced at Siemens Mobility Sacramento Manufacturing Plant and feature more than 160 suppliers in 27 States – from brakes in South Carolina to cooling water systems in Michigan.
Powered by what the company refers to as ‘FPL clean biodiesel,’ its locomotives are diesel-electric, while bicycles can be stored on-board.
The trains look modern and spacious and the service is an ambitious move by Brightline to try and persuade Americans to ditch the automobile and take to the rails.
Return day trips are eminently possible from Orlando to Miami. Image: Courtesy Brightline.
There are an impressive 30 return trains (15 in each direction) per day linking Orlando to Miami and while national rail operator, Amtrak does ply the same route, travel on the same date would necessitate an overnight stay in Miami before returning the next day.
To further tempt passengers to leave the car at home, Brightline offers a SoFlo Solo Pass with 40 personal use rides per month or a Shared Pass with 12 shareable rides per month.
And until New Year’s Eve this year and using promotional code, ALLABOARD at checkout, passengers can save 25% on Smart fares for a party of four or more, with a maximum of sixteen passengers per reservation.
So far, the US has been dominated by Amtrak’s nationwide rail network with the American government as majority shareholder and serving more than 500 destinations in 46 States, the District of Columbia and three Canadian provinces.
The Amtrak network (according to the 2022 company profile) spans 21,400 miles of routes, but when you consider America’s size and compare it to the UK, which has 20,000 miles of railtrack on its own (France, 18,600 miles), there is clearly a massive amount of work to do to tempt travellers across the pond to hop on a train.
Nonetheless, Amtrak, which is significantly upgrading multiple stations, says it operates intercity trains at speeds of up to 150mph, while nearly half of all services reach 100mph.
Amtrak was recently awarded nearly $10 billion in Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) funding from the US government to modernise critical infrastructure, improve stations and support growth on the Northeast Corridor (NEC).
The company notes “NEC ridership continues to rise,” exceeding pre-pandemic levels since early summer.
“These grants will help advance Amtrak’s plans to modernise the Northeast Corridor and unlock major bottlenecks on the busiest passenger rail corridor in America,” said Amtrak CEO Stephen Gardner.
Will Amtrak face increasing number of rivals? Image by 70154 from Pixabay.
Brightline has someway to go to reach the size of Amtrak, but it does have the advantage of being seen as the disruptor and providing a shiny new product to compete with legacy operators.
The sheer regularity of its 30 daily services shuttling between Miami and Orlando may persuade punters it is a viable option to just turn up and go, while the airlines will be casting a forensic eye to see if their passengers are tempted away.
When Eurostar became a reality between London and Paris, the Channel Tunnel eventually saw off flights from Gatwick to Paris Charles de Gaulle as the sheer hassle of slogging in and out of airports nowhere near the city centre was replaced by easy – and good value – services between the two capitals. And just as an added bonus, no luggage limits or fussing about with separating liquids at security to boot.
It’s perfectly possible to fly from Orlando to Miami, but could Brightline eventually replace the plane with the train?
US is not a static rail environment
Maybe it makes more sense to view the US as what it is – 50 separate States – effectively 50 different countries – rather than as a potential for a homogenised nationwide high-speed rail service.
There has been much talk about fast trains between San Francisco and Los Angeles – a perfect distance of 350 miles as far as high-speed trains go – much further and commercial flight options start to become more attractive.
Meanwhile, Texas Central and Amtrak are looking to analyse work on the proposed Dallas-Houston 205mph rail project to examine its viability. If the project comes to fruition, it would see a seriously impressive journey time of less than 90 minutes, with one stop in the Brazos Valley.
So things are happening in America. It’s not a static rail environment and maybe private/public partnership is the way to go, at least to start with as a way of addressing colossal costs in building track.
Will American trains have to offer raft of extras compared to airlines? Image: Courtesy Brightline.
And of course, lurking in the background as ever, is the much-touted ‘hyperloop’ concept, promising much but so far still on the drawing board.
The US will have to work much harder than, say Europe, in persuading its citizens to ditch the car or commercial flights.
American train services will maybe have to offer a dazzling array of goodies to tempt people onto rail, benefits that road and air just can’t compete with.
Clearly, nationwide rail in America has some way to go. But Brightline and others are pointing the way to provide genuine competition to traditional transport modes.
One to watch.
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