One-Of-a-Kind Private Train Takes on Florida’s Traffic Nightmare
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
> Julia Tuttle, a local landowner, convinced Henry Flagler, a railroad tycoon, to expand his Florida East Coast Railway to Miami. On July 28, 1896, Miami was officially incorporated as a city with a population of just over 300.
> Julia DeForest Tuttle was an American businesswoman who was largely responsible for, and the original owner of, the land upon which Miami, Florida, was built. For this reason, she is called the "Mother of Miami".
By building the railroad Flagler gained rights to most of Florida's east coast beach property. So in a sense, Miami was a giant public works project.
Are we going to be willing to do the same for space exploration?
Republicans wanted a payback. That's fine. Every colonial backer wants that. The argument could have been fusion. We'd extract helium on the moon. We'd also have the ability for meta-materials fabrication there given the weaker gravity. All of this could have been wrapped up in the Republican's favorite spending bucket: war readiness. Few argued for that at the time.
The Democrats did what you said, tried to keep their plantations populated through bread and circuses. They lacked the ability to see how colonization would provide jobs and reduce crime by allowing people that don't fit well in society an outlet like the US had with its Western frontier.
At this point the US is too indebted to support such a program, at least at a governmental level. I think our only hope is private parities establishing their own colonies in order to create meta-materials from mined asteroids.
I have never seen this interpretation expressed by anyone else, ever.
I’m not sure that criminals and other social misfits would be welcome in space exploration / colonization. Space is a harsh environment that requires cooperative behavior just to stay alive. Colonization occurred in places where there was oxygen, food and water. The main skills needed were very basic survival skills, and a willingness to murder the non-European (and sometimes European) locals that got in the way.
We are a long way away from the point where we could tolerate a showdown at high noon in space, though that might make for a profitable summer blockbuster.
I hope we can find a more humane way to deal with our troubled fellow humans than to send them on suicide missions.
Do note that many colonies stated not by people living there, but by people going to "get rich" while being supported from home, and they left infrastructure behind that the latter colonists used.
We can heavy lift the manufacturing systems to the moon if we use 3D printing and accept risk of death and colonial collapse. It would be spartan and difficult, but I think we could do it. The meager printing would give rise to more advanced machines capable of manufacturing for materials and forms.
My present thesis is that the government lacks the vision and fortitude to colonize any celestial body. So they won’t land grant.
This same journey would take 45 minutes by car in the express lane. I don't even want to imagine what this would be in the non-express during rush hour.
Some models are better off not being applied.
Is the benefit of running at full tilt in cities really worth it? You don't spend a lot of mileage traveling within a city, and cities are generally places where trains slow down and stop anyways. Combined with the very high cost of land appropriation in a city assuming fair market compensation, there's a reason why most places just don't bother with full high speed rail in urban areas.
Or for an alternative view, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London .
As a result, many states changed their eminent domain laws. Prior to the Kelo decision, only seven states specifically prohibited the use of eminent domain for economic development except to eliminate blight. Since the decision, forty-four states have amended their eminent domain laws, although some of these changes are cosmetic.[30]
The mechanisms were adjusted accordingly as the public and the politicians they voted in saw fit.
In China its been used more regularly however compensation has been often ridiculously pitiful (although sometimes also quite reasonable and this has as I understand improved more recently). Sometimes we pay poor compensation in the west too though maybe not as bad.
Its also tied to China's communist past where land is for the public good (and typically only leased by individuals) as opposed to the west's 'right to land ownership' (i use inverted commas because its never really been an absolute right, even if people use the phrase).
Best practice in my view (as someone in the industry) is probably somewhere in between. I don't believe in a world of limited resources (as we are in) in indefinite rights of land ownership. I do believe however in fair compensation, which probably should be a considerable premium above an independently assessed market value (if the site was otherwise sold today, accounting for any other anticipated changes to the neighbourhood).
The same train takes 12 minutes for the ICE Frankfurt/Cologne to get from Frankfurt central station to Frankfurt Airport (9km linear distance, average 45km/h, 28mph) and then 49 minutes from there to Cologne (150km linear distance, average 183km/h, 113mph).
The latter leg is still pretty close to "populated areas" (just outside various towns along the route), but the track was specifically made for that train (taking required minimum curvature etc into account) and point-to-point connection (fewer junctions).
How many grade crossings are there on that route? This train, at least through Hallandale/Hollywood, needs to deal with a grade crossing every half mile (800m) or so. Considering the crap that went on during the effort 20 years ago to get FEC to stop using horns at certain times of day convincing people that a train should be allowed to do 100+ mph down that line is a non-starter.
That said, I can think of a fair number of places in different places in Europe where there's at-grade crossings in built up areas where trains regularly cross at around 100mph. (OTOH, there's no general requirement for horns/whistles at them.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Central_Railway
https://communityimpact.com/houston/tomball-magnolia/develop...
I agree with you that it's too little too late, but at least they're trying.
Connecting Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso, will take at least a decade, more likely closer to 15 years. There is no real scenario where it happens faster.
From El Paso you push to Tucson, Phoenix, Albuquerque.
From Houston you go to New Orleans.
From Dallas you go to Oklahoma City.
Then if other cities are smart at all and pick up some confidence about what can be done, and at a reasonable cost, you then see eg St Louis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Chicago all link up. And so on.
The model for the US will be regional high speed rail, rather than massive scale coast to coast approaches. Maybe eventually you get high speed interlinking between them.
Atlanta or Jacksonville to Mobile and on to New Orleans, which gets you to Texas via Houston.
El Paso to Tucson/Phoenix gets you to Vegas. Properly that's an easy hop to Los Angeles (skepticism warranted because it's infrastructure in California), which gets you LA to Texas to Miami.
If they did it right, Texas ends up acting as the obvious central web that you can tie the country together with high speed rail over time.
We could build all of this for $400 billion perhaps, if it's done as it will be in Texas in terms of time & cost (enter the land & zoning nightmares in some parts of the country); $20b per year for 20 years (non inflation adjusted), which we can easily afford.
The main difference is that this planning is done much further in advance (although at least the UK is well behind in terms of rail capacity construction - the UK and the US have many similarities in terms of government incompetence).
Only place that is faster is China, but they work on a different scale.
Trains here in Sweden, albeit for longer distances usually go either 120, 160 or 200 km/h. Thats 74/100/124 miles/h.
For a number of reasons, including safety, passenger comfort, and managing the trade-off between energy waste and traveling speed. You can picture a passenger bus and how gradually the driver needs to start the ride. You can't just supercharge the engine and expect passengers to grab hold to their seats.
It takes 35 seconds to accelerate up to top speed, in which case it has travelled 610m. The distance of the track is 25 miles (or 40km), and assuming it maintains the top speed throughout and deceleration matches acceleration for comfort, then the journey would take 19 minutes.
If we take the lower value of 0.79m/s^2, which is what the newest intercity diesel trains do:
It takes 44 seconds to accelerate up to top speed, in which case it has travelled 780m. The journey would take 20 minutes.
Okay, these are somewhat optimistic assumptions, but the European in me would be surprised if there were that many places where it had to slow significantly, and obviously they don't actually have linear acceleration (we're talking closer to 60s to 60mph in the diesel case in reality, though the additional acceleration to 79mph is likely near the maximum acceleration give the reason for the prolongation is reducing jank).
It's a bit subtle, but that folks commute with it doesn't make it a commuter train, I've known folks who commuted via HSR (proper, euro-style).
Don't get me wrong, definitely a great step in the right direction.
It's also worth noting that all rail has to be at this point is faster than its competition, which it is. Cars are slower and this is far too short of a distance for airplanes.
The area has had commuter rail for over 20 years. This express service is using previously freight-only lines. What's really going to be impressive is when it connects Orlando.
Granted, flying is not a cost effective means to commute, but I don’t think rail service from Orlando to Miami will have too many true commuters on board compared to less frequent travelers.
Not cheap though, HSR tickets are not $10 (though it's not that far if you're using a high-frequency subscription thing, especially if you're using it daily).
Only at Miami since the Orlando train station is, again, at the Orlando airport. So the traffic trouble will be the exact same.
Basically most of the reason our trains suck is because our regulatory body sucks.
The Acela hits 150mph along some stretches in New England.
That's not necessarily a fair comparison, as IIRC Amtrack shares rail tracks with cargo trains. Cargo trains are far slower and occupy tracks for longer stretches of time, while passenger trains require longer stretches of track to be reserved for their passage to ensure higher circulation speeds. Thus, having to share tracks with slower trains limits how the track can be allocated to passenger traffic.
To put it differently, that would be like stating that a bus is slow because in some stretches of road it is forced to wait cargo trucks to pass.
Wikipedia says that several companies run freight trains over sections of the NEC, as well as the line is also used by commuter trains.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor
As a comparison, the TGV connection between Paris and Brussels may be a high-speed track, but train speeds grind to a halt way down to 20km/h when passing through track sections used by commuter and freight trains.
~40km, 18 minutes. That's an average speed of ~130km/h.
There's also a run with 4 station stops inbetween and makes the trip in 28, so that's still an average speed of ~85km/h.
77km/h average on a ~40km non-stop (I'm assuming) run is quite slow.
Confirmed looking at the official site, there is no stop between Miami and Ft Lauredale.
Brightline covers a few cities with one long strip of a suburb the entire route. Except in length the comparison isn't remotely fair.
Silver Service has more stops along the way than Brightline.
The acceleration and waiting at stations really hits the average.
This is 63 km (39 mi) as the crow flies (66 km by track), so an average speed of 126 km/h (78 mph), substantially quicker than the Miami to Ft Lauredale service.
There are plenty of places in Europe where 100mph+ running through urban areas is common. Urban v. rural isn't really a consideration for line speeds here. Heck, most of the mainlines north and west out of London reach their 125mph top speeds while still within Greater London. The question here is more about the presence and type of at-grade crossings, and there's a fair number on lines with 125mph running.
Actually, having to wait about 1 or 2 minutes at each stop is what really drags down the commercial speed. A train only takes a fraction of that time to go from 100km/h to zero.
Take the straight line distance and using that to computer average speed is disingenuous to say the least.
"Trains without "an automatic cab signal, automatic train stop or automatic train control system "may not exceed 79 mph."" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_speed_limits_in_the_Unite...
I don't believe that's remotely slow. A commercial speed of 48mph (about 77km/h) is a respectable speed for a conventional intercity and suburban train. Please note that commercial speed is the average speed, and also takes into account the time that a train stays at each stop.
As a comparison, the commercial speed of a tram (light rail, no right-of-way) is around 20km/h (about 12mph) and the average commercial speed of a subway system (medium rail, right-of-way) is about 30km/h (about 17mph). The latter is, obviously, also not slow because it matches the average speed of an automobile circulating in an urban area.
Going nearly 80km/h is respectably fast, and will beat the commercial speed of your typical commute by car.
There's nothing respectable about under 80 for an intercity train which has 0 stops over 40km. In Europe this is an average speed more closely associated with commuter train, or the regional trains with relatively frequent stops (every 5~10km).
"The train runs at a top speed of 79 miles per hour on the leg between Miami and Fort Lauderdale compared to an average speed of about 34 miles per hour for cars"
Which only happens on certain stretches of track, and can be affected by how many stops a particular train needs to make or how many others are ahead of it.
For a distance of 30 miles, shouldnt we be able to build a train that averages 60 mph for 30 minutes?
China is working on low-speed maglevs.
Unless you're building a straight line, you need larger and larger curves to accommodate high speed traffic, which makes the cost of higher speed rise significantly since you can't just buy a curve and split a property in two. A train going at 220 km/h has a minimum curve radius of 2.5km; a train at 300 km/h has a minimum curve radius of 4km; and a train at 350 km/h has a minimum curve radius of 7km.
No one said you need to go 300 kph.
What’s an acceptable time to accelerate to that speed?
This thing has 30mn legs (Miami to Ft Lauredale and Ft Lauredale and West Palm Beach have no intermediate stops), it's not a commuter rail. Subways have a few minutes (and km) between stations.
French regional trains run this kind of route in under 20mn: https://www.google.fr/maps/dir/Dijon+Gare,+Dijon,+France/Bea...
And from experience I can tell you that they can be used comfortably standing, they accelerate no faster than a subway.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_railway_curve_radius#S...
However, from your numbers, 4km * (350 / 300)^2 = 5.4 km, not 7 km. The Wiki article agrees with the 300 km/h => 4km radius data point, but agrees with me for 350 km/h, and actually says 400 km/h => 7 km. Was it a typo on your part, or am I missing something?
I do believe that, holding everything else constant, the minimum allowable radius would be proportional to the square of the velocity of the train. If you look at table 6.15 on page 183, it compares 250 km/h with 350 km/h, and 350/250 = 7/5, and (7/5)^2 = 49/25 = 1.96, so I would predict the radius would be roughly 2x for 350 as for 250, and, if you compare corresponding entries in the table, you see this holds very well for the columns labeled "(1)" and for the rightmost three columns, although those labeled "(2)" (apparently done with a different calculation—I can't see the page the calculation is from) diverge somewhat.
Just the San Jose <-> San Francisco portion is ~47 miles.
Caltrain's timetables give the following for San Jose Diridon Station to San Francisco 4th and King Station, weekday service:
* Train 101, local, 20 stops, 04:28 -- 06:03 (1 hour 35 minutes)
* Train 207, local south half / limited north half, 12 stops, 05:59 -- 07:24 (1 hour 25 minutes)
* Train 211, limited south half / local north half, 17 stops, 06:23 -- 07:57 (1 hour 34 minutes)
* Train 215, limited, 9 stops, 06:54 -- 08:07 (1 hour 13 minutes)
* Train 305, "Baby Bullet" pattern A, 4 stops, 05:45 -- 06:47 (1 hour 2 minutes)
* Train 309, "Baby Bullet" pattern B, 5 stops, 06:04 -- 07:08 (1 hour 4 minutes)
So the best the system manages (the 4-stop "Baby Bullet" pattern) is 62 minutes for 47 miles, averaging just over 45mph. The worst (the local making all stops) is 95 minutes for 47 miles, averaging just under 30mph.
Factoring out the time spent stopped at the stations is unfortunately not possible from Caltrain's timetables, which only give the scheduled time of departure from each station.
> For a distance of 30 miles, shouldnt we be able to build a train that averages 60 mph for 30 minutes?
Euro regional rail does 80+mph for this sort of non-stop distances.
What are we missing?
more people traveling in train instead of personal car will also reduce co2 in air which is eco friendly too.
less traffic means there is a wide and safe road for bicycle rider and people who like to walk.
one big benefit of travel throw train is time. you can be on place on estimated time. due to less traffic.
All my comments are based on my experience, I am traveling throw train for work, here in tokyo.
It might take some time for development to build around the idea of this form of transit as people reconfigure their live-work arrangements around it but it should be do-able. Hopefully the local ordinances are adjusted to allow for this reconfiguration.
Why do SF tech companies keep reinventing the bus??
Owning a car is becoming a major, but necessary, liability for those that don’t have mass transit.
Nothing. This is a bad business model.
I know it is astounding, but sometimes people with lots of money can make stupid decisions with that money.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/sep/01/juicero-s...
[2] https://www.marketwatch.com/story/betsy-devoss-family-lost-1...
If we had the option, instead, to pay $100 per person to ride up on a relaxing train, we'd probably be taking the kids every other weekend over the summer.
Alternatively, taking a slightly more cynical outlook, they might be gambling on a hurricane evac windfall or two. As Irma approached we evac'd our family to Orlando, but the drive that usually took 3 hours turned into 12 hours of bumper-to-bumper nightmare. Flights out of MIA and FLL that usually cost $300 or $400 jumped in price to over $3500 literally overnight. For even $400 we probably would've opted for the train.
That is like half way from SF to Tahoe on Friday after work.
Or go around the east side of Lake Okeechobee at South Bay, 98/441. Less civilization, more tourist traffic and having to deal with passing zones... but still a nicer ride than the Turnpike.
Either way takes a bit longer but the scenery is nicer. For middle Florida values of nice scenery, anyway -- I greatly prefer the mountains.
Last year in the UK I helped optimise a ppc campaign for Centre Parcs (up market forest holidays) and they found that almost all customers would only drive < 2hours.
So I knocked up a simple Perl system that used the lat and long of every post town/place in the country and worked out the as the crow flies distance to each site.
> A one-way ticket initially will cost $10 compared with a trip on Uber that can cost $40 or more.
The price will go up after people are addicted to the convenience and luxury if it's superior to the alternatives.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/transportation/fl-reg-brigh...
> Real-time fares are displayed online and vary based on demand, day, time, service (Select or Smart), cities and Special Requests. During our introductory period, rides as low as $10 one way will continue to be available, but only for limited trains while seats last. Book now!
Hong Kong leverages this: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/capital-projects-and-inf...
https://archpaper.com/2018/01/floridas-brightline-private-ra...
Streetcars, in the sense that they're being implemented in North America are no faster than buses in mixed traffic. What they mostly lend is the idea of permanently high frequency transit, which is a positive sign for developers although not as useful for residents as light rail.
These lines stuck around until the late 1950s, and had dedicated lane ownership. The city I live in is small and was demolished by urban renewal, so as suburbs that were a 15 minute drive away developed, the system declined with the central business district.
http://www.clara.com.au/the-clara-plan.html
Bold plan but I hope they can see it through.
It's basically sacrilege to invest in infrastructure other than coal power plants in this country.
There is a lot of solid economics behind this approach. The problem with infrastructure is that it generates a lot of positive externality. The passenger benefits, but so too does the business that employs the commuters who ride in rail, or the retail owners. Inability to capture revenues from these sources makes infrastructure investment less attractive than it otherwise should be.
In fact, the 7 Line extension serving the Hudson Yards development in New York also involved a bait-and-switch in which a intermediate subway station was promised, the neighborhood was developed, and then the subway station was cancelled due to cost concerns.
You could also argue that this sort of infrastructure is best done by the government because it is best positioned to reap the benefits. Medieval historians would use the word Landesausbau. I understand that rural parts of Japan Railways are essentially enabling tourism.
If you're an advocate for transportation options, this is a good thing.
But on the other hand, if you don't build and replace infrastructure now, you're going to have tons of problems that have real, tangible costs. Imagine you're a patient with a disease, but you don't have health insurance and you know the cost is for treatment is high. You wait several years to get treated but the cost for treatment hasn't changed or is higher and you've suffered all that time.
That's our conundrum. We can choose to not treat the disease and that's been the choice of a fair number of public officials but it's only cost us.
So do lots of private projects. Large-scale projects in general have this problem. I'd like to see a comparison of private and public.
Also, at the end of a public project, the public owns valuable assets.
A large number of movies, split roughly equally between masterpieces like Alien and forgettable failures like Water World?
I don't think anyone who was around in the 90s will forget Waterworld, just not for the reasons the studio wanted!
The idea that the private sector is somehow more efficient at large-scale projects can only be believed by people who deliberately ignore the track record of large-scale private-sector projects.
> In 1993, FoxMeyer Drugs was the fourth largest distributor of pharmaceuticals in the U.S., worth $5 billion. In an attempt to increase efficiency, FoxMeyer purchased an SAP system and a warehouse automation system and hired Andersen Consulting to integrate and implement the two in what was supposed to be a $35 million project. By 1996, the company was bankrupt; it was eventually sold to a competitor for a mere $80 million.
> In 1998, two years after filing for bankruptcy, FoxMeyer sued Andersen and SAP for $500 million each, claiming it had paid twice the estimate to get the system in a quarter of the intended sites. The suits were settled and/or dismissed in 2004.
https://www.computerworld.com/article/2533563/it-project-man...
> Installed in 2003, the system promptly ran into what were then described as "horrendous" barcode-reading errors. Regardless, in 2005 the company claimed the system was operating as intended. Two years later, the entire project was scrapped, and Sainsbury's wrote off £150 million in IT costs. (That's $265,335,000 calculated by today's exchange rate, enough to buy a lot of groceries.)
Target's failed expansion to Canada makes for a fun read, too: http://www.canadianbusiness.com/the-last-days-of-target-cana...
Sadly those that pay for crossrail are the workers who pay marginal tax rates of 45%, 55%, even higher than 70% in some cases, on the money their employer spends on them.
Those that benefit are the non-workers, who pay very little in tax (unearned income is taxed far less than earned income), and benfit from £5.5b increase in land value [1] from their monopolization of a common asset.
[0] https://www.civilserviceworld.com/articles/feature/crossrail... [1] http://www.crossrail.co.uk/news/articles/crossrail-predicted...
An I would love for my next job to be paid in London a similar to salaries FANG pay in SV (housing costs are about the same) and pay additional rate tax as that would give me a lot more options for pension contributions could max out my ISA that's 20k pa removed from any future tax.
Also when I buy RDSB (Shell) shares the dividend and capital gain I get is in return for risking my post tax money its defiantly not unearned income from my perspective.
At the "higher tax" threshold, you can earn an extra £118, but end up paying an extra £268 in tax as you lose married couple tax allowance -- i.e. do some overtime and end up with less money.
Meanwhile those who are wealthy and powerful enough to structure their earnings as capital gains pay a mere 28%
Sounds like your one of those people who earn enough several times the UK median wage to have some child benefit removed.
Ranting about people who put equity at risk and receive capital gains seems strange for such a high earner such as you why haven't you done salary a sacrifice into a pension.
If you look at households with two adults and two children, this kicks in just below the median [2]
The upshot is that I do £1k overtime, which costs my employer £1138, and I keep £400 My collegue who earns 50% as much as me keeps £600 My contractor collegue who is paid twice as much gets paid that £1138 and he keeps £682 My part time collegue who does 5 days a fortnight and gets paid more per day than I do keeps £670 (as does her husband who does the same shift pattern - so they have the same pre-tax household income but far more post-tax)
Not exactly progressive.
[0] https://www.virgintrainscareers.co.uk/VacancyInformation.asp... [1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/03/15/how-well-off-are... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/money/2014/mar/25/uk-incomes-how...
I few years ago I was the lead technical resource for an in house consultancy at RELEX and solved major problems for house hold names and I got paid < 1/2 what a train driver does for a 4 day week.
You both need to realize you are lucky and also learn some maths you colleague who earn 50% less than you is not coming out ahead.
A household with one earner on £50k has a post-tax income of £37k, 26% above average as a household, and lightly under average for the size of household.
My collegue who earns 50% less for 50% of the work does come out ahead. My household works 40 hours a week and gets £50k, her household works 40 hours a week and gets £50k. Our marginal tax rate is over 60%, theirs is 33%.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/08/17/britons-bett...
Consider for example that every single American (at least) on this forum has heard about California high-speed rail and how much it costs, but I had never heard of this $8-billion highway project until I just googled "LA highway projects":
http://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-high-desert-fr...
Projects like that one are running all the time and nobody cares or complains.
I think privatized systems (with appropriate incentive structures) are particularly appropriate for the U.S., because most of the country does not use transit, so there is little effective political oversight over transit systems.
The developer builds and sells the homes but retains the town centers and thus makes money on leasing retail and restaurants.
There is barely any undeveloped land in the metro area that the Brightline is starting life in. There is underdeveloped land on the rail corridor that can be used to further increase population density, but that is true of many metro areas.
We have a national government, why can't they provide grants to increase and build more railways? I mean the US government provides billions in grants/money to maintain and build roads because States are unable, whether politically or mathematically, to raise taxes to cover the true costs of road maintenance.
The current model is equivalent to socializing the losses and privatizing the profits. Let's go all public or all private but not some horrible mishmash system like we did with healthcare.
The states have actually been raising gas taxes due to the inability of the federal government to do so (and provide more funding.) In fact the main issue these days is that the federal government hands out lots of money for new projects but not a lot for maintenance, which just encourages localities and states to spend a lot of money on infrastructure they don't really need because they don't need to think about the long term liabilities and the lifecycle replacement.
As to the government building things: it can’t. For whatever reason our governments in the US are completely unable to build and maintain infrastructure, especially transit. The two best American systems, NYC and DC, are in shambles now after decades of mismanagement. This is not unique to transit: local governments all over the country are poisoning kids through ancient lead water pipes. We are unwilling to spend the money, and when we do, our outrageous public unions and NIMBYism cause things to cost multiples what it costs Europe or Asia.
That’s not true of all governments. (Though, I think you’d be surprised to see that most European countries have a heavier dose of privatization than the US, though less than Japan.) But for whatever reason, maybe some moral deficiency in our body politic, its true of ours. Given that, developing a market solution is a good option. And allowing the transit provider to “tax” both sides of the equation by charging fares as well as rents on surrounding land, is an economically sound way of optimizing the incentive to invest.
The first is that they own the land surrounding the station and are pursuing development potential. They are deliberately trying the Hong Kong MTR model here. This should help, but if they do it right (like the MTR does it), they'll be able to make money on rail revenues alone, with development being the cherry on top.
But the big one is the growth of the line. The dirty secret in HSR is that fast trains are valuable not because of their top speed, but rather because of how their acceleration enables more stops with minimal negative impact to their schedule. The revenue of a line tends to grow polynomially (where the polynomial is > 1) with the length and the number of stops, whereas the speed decreases logarithmically. The value of a Miami to Ft Lauderdale line is tiny, with the market defined by the people who are going from Miami to Ft Lauderdale. But as the line grows, the market definition will include anybody with travel demand found in the cartesian product of {Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Boca Raton, Pompano Beach, Palm Beach, Orlando}. That market is huge, and this segment is just the beginning.
Also, this I think is more geared for tourist traffic than daily commute traffic. Orlando for the parks, West Palm Beach for the shopping (my guess), Ft. Lauderdale and Miami for the cruise ships.
Not in the slightest. Every successful HSR system in the world has plenty of stops in what most people would consider trivial towns. And they all regularly run on average well below their top speed because of it. Those aren't pointless stops; when put in the context of the rest of the cartesian network, they provide significant enough revenue to justify their own existence.
This is true for both HSR lines that are publicly owned as well as pure private systems like in Japan...in other words, they aren't there for political reasons. In fact, the most financially successful lines in the world happen to have the most stops in <50k population towns. If there is any political influence in the matter, it is doing the opposite and passing up stops with little political power, to their financial detriment. Like I said, the real reason for the power in HSR is acceleration, not top speed.
The only thing that defeats the purpose of HSR is when they don't make enough money to justify their existence, making them eventually go away.
(nb - from Cocoa)
This ferengi formula goes way over my head. Here we just have government sponsored trains that take people places and costs what it costs. It all runs on wind. After doing the very bussy part of the trip you get to see giant trains with 1 or 2 passengers at 30 min interval. I think cheap parking for cleaning and maintanace alone makes it worth rolling them to barely habited areas.
Most city light-rail projects in the US are 150 to 200 million per above-ground mile. https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-ex...
Tri-rail is strictly a commuter train and is not an intercity train. Except for West Palm Beach all the train stations are just outside the main corridors of major cities, along I-95. You'll need to take a bus, shuttle, rideshare or taxi into the city center. Miami has it far worse as Tri-rail doesn't follow the I-95 corridor and heads west to Hialeah. Basically dropping you off into a train yard where you then have to take the metrorail into the city of Miami.
Brightline is another attempt at creating real intercity rail. A few stops at major cities. There is parking but it is not commuter park and ride.
Btw, I don't own a car. I use mass transit, rideshare, and care hire. In South Florida I'm a bit of an anomaly.
My guess is they are banking on ridership to Orlando. It talks of connecting to Atlanta, and other cities, which would be nice. I've transplanted to Atlanta and would take a train over driving or flying (at a reasonable cost) in a heart beat.
Florida and California are the two hot spots right now that really need to succeed. I don't think I'll see real high speed rail expansion in the US before (if) I reach retirement age, but I think it will greatly benefit the next generation. But for that to happen, it needs a lot of support to expand now.
[1] Years ago, some friends and I took public transportation from Boca Raton to the Miami Zoo. One way took over three hours and involved several transfers between rail and bus systems.
Only for refits of existing lines. For new lines it's 240.
Could see it making an effect on marginal[0] decisions (like buying a second car as you state) but it still sounds more to me like being used more for one off trips than for commuting. It's far to expensive for that.
[0] marginal in the economic sense
Your best bet, as a new rail line are people whose regular transportation demands change while the line is still new and shiny (e.g. new job at the far end of the line, do I drive/move/rail?). This also meshes very well with the real estate development model of financing the line.
Plus ~12,000 fewer miles driven per year. Even if they can't get rid of their car payment/car insurance entirely the mileage saved is significant.
This was cars sold in 2012, so only 6 years old. The average light vehicle is almost 12 years old. But according to some reports, the measurements in the US are different, leading to lower MPGs for the same car.
I guess my messed up reasoning when I am reading a sentence...
$ = dollar
20$ = Twenty Dollar
$20 = Dollar Twenty
I know it's not the correct way but it's the way my mind thinks...
Also sure Florida has plenty of freight trains, something I'm used to but it seems like Brightline passes more frequently (not sure if they're still doing test runs here and there) which mess up local traffic patterns especially in rush hour times.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fort-lauderdale/fl...
I presume you aren't familiar with how well freeways perform in this respect?
Like it has only 8 north and 8 south bound trains per day. Will this be really interesting for enough commuters to switch?
Also most people won't be at their destination when the train stops at a station, will the ticket be compatible with other transit providers?
Nevertheless I hope it is a success, even though the patriotism on the site is annoying me: "We’re American-made and 100% Buy America-compliant." At least the trains were made by Siemens. ;-)
the problem with trains is they are not flexible to change in population needs where buses are. however since this is between two cities it avoids a lot of waste that is inherent in light rail that cities use for metro transit.
the real numbers that matter is maintenance, how is this budgeted for. one of the major issues facing public light rail is the tens of billions in deferred maintenance combined with removing buses because of the cost of paying for the rail.
will this succeed? who knows, they have to convince people that it is worth their time and money to park their car at point A, ride the train to point B, and secure transportation at cost to their destination if it is not close. that is a lot to overcome and the city needs to assist by not preventing ride hailing services and taxis from providing options at both ends as well as making sure if there are local bus services that they do come to the stations
My bigger point is, when you $10 for a ticket with the train you need to pay additionally for you next leg of the commute. If you commute it is really a good idea when the ticket is valid for your entire commute, not matter to which transport you transfer: train, light rail, or bus.
I hope it work. But I can't help being a bit cynical.
p.s. I hope this train floats because it won't be long before Miami is treading (climate change) water.
Are the costs to counter the effects of sea level rise (in Miami) accounted for in car transportation? We are already bailing out fossil fuelled individual motorized transport, but who is attributing these costs to the culprit?
I might even go so far to argue that projects such as this (e.g., the ship is going down but the band keeps playing) led the general public to believe that there's nothing to worry about. "Who would build a billion+ train that's going to end up under water?"
It's a good idea. Or is it?
I know there are monorails (outside of Disney) that Florida municipalities spent a lot of money on but are rarely used (for a multitude of reasons). I don't think the revenue even covers the cost of maintenance in many cases. I think he's referring to that.
I remember talk about a train that goes down the 95 corridor from Jax to Miami. I'm not sure whatever happened to that.
To be clear, I like the idea - less cars, more trains But in this case something isn't adding up.
I don't know which places people go to in Miami anyway, besides the beach ;)
Sydney to Melbourne was the most traveled air route in the world at one point. There really needs to be a high speed line between the through via the ACT. They could have probably built one with the money the wasted on Myki.
The train would need to be under 4 hours to really be competitive with flying.
It could be done, with something like a TGV style train. I can't imagine how much it would cost though.
It may be expensive if you include the externalities of climate change.