Brightline Orlando's first train: 125 mph from MCO to MIA [video] | Hacker News Reader

Brightline Orlando's first train: 125 mph from MCO to MIA [video]

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89 pointsipnon163 comments

This is simultaneously exciting and embarrassing: exciting because the US is finally seeing some amount of non-remedial rail investment after decades of intentional neglect, and embarrassing because the outcome is still so menial (a diesel locomotive traveling at barely HSR speeds at its peak).

It proves we are in fact capable of grading a railroad to support faster speeds. We have a lot of historical tracks that never had this requirement

> It proves we are in fact capable of grading a railroad to support faster speeds.

In one important way, it doesn't: the majority of the Brightline Orlando route runs over the pre-existing Florida East Coast Railway[1], which was re-graded to support speeds of 110mph, not higher. That's well below even the lowest bar for HSR (i.e. 125mph).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida_East_Coast_Railway

110 is still faster than the 79mph that 99% of the rail network is limited to, where even that's possible.

Yes, and that's a significant accomplishment! Maybe they'll be able to get this route above its current expected average speed of 69mph at some point.

Didn’t we already prove that with the NEC?

It's also going nowhere. Miami to Orlando... Airport! Not city, not Disney. Orlando Airport. Then what? Rent a car?

Right. As far as I can tell, MCO doesn't have any real mass transit besides buses. Maybe they're thinking that Brightline will eventually expand into downtown Orlando itself, or will link directly to SunRail[1]?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunRail

Phase 3 of the Brightline, the expansion to the Orlando airport from West Palm Beach was phase 2, has 3 planned stops. The Orange County Convention Center, near Disney Springs and Tampa. It will connect to the SunRail at the convention center stop.

Or a taxi, car service, friend, family, own cat in a parking lot (already present at an airport), city bus, walking, folding bicycle, transcontinental Starship service (coming soon to MCO) . . .

The airport is not exactly in town, unless you want to walk or bike 10 miles with luggage.

You get to Orlando city center...and there's not much to do, it's very tiny part of a low density city. There is a bus terminal and an Amtrak station. I did get around town on the city busses pretty well.

Pretty easy to catch a shuttle bus to Disney and local hotels from the airport. Probably more transportation from there than downtown.

This is true, and it’s worth noting: there would be more to do in Orlando’s city center if it had a direct connection to another major city.

This is one of the many ways in which designing for cars/low density “curses” an area to perpetual underdevelopment: direct rail connections would be speculative rather than serving existing demand.

You're looking at it backwards. Orlando is the tourist destination. People fly into Orlando from all over the world. They're already at the airport. Taking a day in Miami now fits into their existing travel plans.

I don’t understand this.

So someone flew into Orlando airport, and then immediately took a train to Miami?

Why not just fly into Miami instead?

You take it once you're done with Disney. Go to Disney, take the train to Miami, then go back to the airport to head home.

Then the train should stop at Disney, not at the airport you're not even flying out of.

There's a planned expansion to the Orange County Convention Center and Disney after the airport stop.

Why not? That's what you'd do if you flew in.

More generally, airports have many options for ground transportation and connecting to an existing transport hub makes a lot of sense.

Apparently there's a company that just runs shuttles to Disney.

Disney wanted to build a maglev from Orlando Airport to Disney property. Prevent any revenue leakage. Everybody else in the area screamed.

That would have been convenient. What I think they should do is work with the other major parks (Universal, SeaWorld) to build a maglev to a specific hub where you can then split off and go directly to the park. This way it's not specific to Disney (appeases some, not all, naysayers) and you still get Airport-to-Disney train access. Of course that means Disney loses some control but I think it'll be a net positive for them overall.

Here's a driving map from the Orlando Airport to all the parks I mentioned above. You can see there's a central area not far from SeaWorld that could a good place to build this hub:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZuR1a8fVNQoXmPeK8

If you build normal railway line instead, you can run direct trains from many other towns and cities, in addition to metro/commuter-style fast connections from Orlando / Orlando Airport.

Disneyworld Paris has a normal station within it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marne-la-Vall%C3%A9e%E2%80%93C...

Disney wanted to build a 7-minute maglev ride from Orlando Airport to Disney properties, with no other stops.[1] "“Obviously, it makes no sense to operate a train at 350 miles an hour and have it make a stop every four miles.” - Disney rep.

It would have been a huge competitive win for Disney. People who took that route would not rent cars. Car rental, once you're on Disney property, is deliberately inconvenient, involving bus travel off the property.

[1] https://archive.ph/He0tR

That's one of the advantages of traveling by train rather than airplane: train stations are much closer to city centers than airports. And, at least in Europe, they are the "existing transport hub" of the city, connected to things like subway, suburban trains, city and long-distance buses etc.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline#Planned_and_propose...

I think there's a few things to note (as someone who used to live in Orlando):

1) The actual city of Orlando is about 9miles (as the crow flies) from the airport

2) The Brightline eventually plans to go to Tampa on the west coast of Florida, but is coming from South Florida

3) The existing Amtrak/Sunrail lines run south-ish to north-ish on the west side of downtown Orlando. To use the existing routes and knowing where Brightline plans to go, it'd likely have to go through the airport anyway, then curve north to downtown Orlando, then turn around and head back down southwest-ish to Tampa.

4) At some point they hope to connect the existing Sunrail commuter rail to the airport, so you could take that to downtown

5) There's not really a whole lot to do in downtown Orlando itself, not a ton of shopping, restaurants or entertainment. Most travelers to Orlando are there to go to the theme parks that are outside of downtown.

They call trains traveling at 200Kph "high speed" in my country but the Japanese run them at twice those speeds.

It's a tiny country so it doesn't matter that much but if in the future we want to replace airplanes we need to do better.

Nit: closer to 1.5, the Shinkansen generally run at 300 or slightly below (the N700S series which started service in 2020 runs at 300 in Taiwan and on Sanyo Shinkansen, but 285 on Tokaido Shinkansen, and 260 on Nishi Kyushu Shinkansen, it does have a design speed of 360).

Japan currently has only one line rated above 300, and it’s Tohoku at 320 (and only until Morioka, though this is getting upgraded, and the line might get re-rated to 360 in its entirety once that’s done and if ALFA-X succeeds).

AFAIK the only production non-maglev trains designed for 400 are the Chinese CR400 (“fuxing”) and they’re currently operated at 350.

they do that in germany too. it's ridiculous.

wikipedia has a good overview of the reality: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail_in_Europe

> tiny country

Japan spans the length of the US, and has more than 100 million people in it. Tiny isn't exactly what I'd call it.

I think by "tiny country" Yeul means their own country rather than japan.

It does remind me of the Intercity 125 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/InterCity_125) - Which was introduced into service in 1976...

There was a diesel-powered express passenger line [0] that ran at an average 69 mph between Chicago and Denver... back in 1936. The Florida one in the OP also averages 69 mph [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_Zephyr

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline

- "The first Zephyr service to Denver began May 31, 1936, with the trainsets of the Pioneer Zephyr and the Mark Twain Zephyr, trains 9900 and 9903. This new service was known as the Advance Denver Zephyr and operated on a 16-hour schedule."

(1,109 miles / 16 hours = 69 mph (112 kph))

European high-speed trains do 195mph, no security controls except between France and Great Britain, relatively cheap, and often cheaper and faster than planes up to 600 miles, taking into account transportation to the airport and time lost waiting at the airport, since airports are often inefficient and can be quite poorly connected given the traffic.

High-speed trains in Spain also have a security check; luggage is x-rayed. It is a bit simpler than the London-Paris/Brussels check, as it isn't combined with a passport check.

(And also in China, though there they also have similar checks at some metro and other railway stations.)

Isn't that because of the Madrid bombings? Makes sense when taken in that context.

Bombing at any crowded place causes terrible result, so I don't know is it make sense to inspect especially for train. Airplane is a different case since it become a missile.

It's always a country wide trauma when these attacks happen, you can't blame them for adding security. Also a bomb in a train tunnel or in a train travelling at 300kph surely is worse than a lot of other scenarios

I know France and Germany don't do it, as another data point.

It is usually a very quick check, I never had to wait in line for that and you don't have to remove anything from the bag.

Also bus lines in mexico do similar checks.

Security and custom checks in Switzerland. Had to go through customs and security check before boarding a train between GVA and Paris. Also had everyone’s passport checked while on a train between GVA and Milan. Not just France and GB that have stops. Can’t forget Switzerland.

That's strange. I lived in Switzerland my whole life and don't remember having had a security / passport check for a boarding a train ever. So it's definitely not normal / regular to have this in Switzerland. Most of western Europe is part of the the Schengen Area, so there's no need for passport checks.

I've had random checks in the train over the year between Switzerland and France and Switzerland and Italy. They are definitely not regular/mandatory though.

Between Switzerland and Italy there are, or there used to be, foreign border agents on the train rather than checkpoints.

Switzerland signed the Schengen Agreement in 2008.

It’s unlikely they have border controls since then although they probably did before.

Random checks still do exist. Also in the highways and border sometimes.

Schengen is nice on paper but anyone who travels extensively knows border checks and random highway/train checks happen all the time. Go to Poland/Slovakia/Austria/&c.

Schengen allows free movement of EU citizen and people legally residing/visiting.

It means you can travel without visa.

It _does not_ mean borders are fully open and you can go in and out with absolutely no control

This is not generally required when travelling between Schengen countries. National governments may introduce immigration checks within Schengen, and in recent years have sometimes done so for particular reasons e.g. during Covid lockdowns or due to a sharp increase in refugees/asylum seekers. But these are short-lived and it is not the norm.

It seems that nothing is so permanent as a temporary Schengen border control. Some of them have been in place since 2015 and it doesn't look like they'll go away any time soon. In fact Germany is looking to expand them, adding border controls on its Czech and Polish border.

> This is not generally required when travelling between Schengen countries.

It happens more and more due to illegal immigration. I've beens topped in trains, buses, highway parking, by police officers asking of passport and reasons to travel.

In Paris/Marseille/Strasbourg I've always been controlled since ~2020

It isn't clear if you meant this as an aside, but Switzerland is a Schengen area country. It isn't in the EU/EEA which (in some sense) necessitates customs checks more so than immigration checks, but nonetheless there are frequent checks on the border with its neighbouring countries which are in the EU/EEA. It's less common by private vehicle, in my experience.

> before boarding a train between GVA and Paris

From the airport straight into the train?

Yes sometimes there are intra-Schengen checks in trains but the most I've seen is people checking the passports in route

> European high-speed trains do 195mph, no security controls except between France and Great Britain

It depends a lot on where you start/go to, I've recently experienced more and more controls before boarding, with gates, police, sometime bag checks, &c. I assume it's due to more and more migrants riding trains for free to reach some countries, I see it almost every time I take long range train between France/Germany/Luxembourg

Connecting to airports as transportation hubs is interesting and makes a lot of sense - gives you access to 24/7 rental cars, air travel, and often rail connections to downtown areas. One thing with traveling on Amtrak in most of America is it plops you in a downtown with few options for getting anywhere.

There are a few airports in Europe with a high-speed train station in the airport, like Roissy in Paris (sadly the trains don't go to Paris, wouldn't be French enough) or Düsseldorf and Frankfurt. It can be extremely practical to take the train to downtown wherever in the country instead of waiting 5 hours for your connecting flight to an airport 20 miles away from civilization.

Add Brussles and Geneva.

There is a very inconsistent and incomplete list on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airport_rail_link_syst...

The problem is that you get stuck in a local maximum.

Nobody really wants to be at an airport. They are located on the outskirts of cities due to noise issues, and you still have to spend quite a lot of time traveling to downtown or even the completely opposite side of the city. It is also extremely difficult to actually build things near the train station due to all the space being required for the airport itself.

Compare the Orlando terminal[0] with a train station like Amsterdam Zuid[1], which is going to be the terminus for high-speed trains in the near future. Orlando has rental cars and taxis. Amsterdam Zuid has 32 semi-local trains per hour, 3 metro lines each serving 6 trains per hour in either direction, 9 bus lines with similar frequencies, and 2 comparable tram lines.

The Orlando terminal is within walking distance of Orlando Airport terminal C. Amsterdam Zuid is within walking distance of a major hospital, a major university, and offices for multinationals like Google, Accenture, and the European Medicine Agency.

When you have to rent a car to get to your destination anyways, why bother taking a train?

[0]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brightline+Orlando+Train+S...

[1]: https://www.google.com/maps/place/Amsterdam+Zuid/@52.334522,...

Link: https://www.orlandoairports.net/parking-transportation/

Orlando (MCO) has:

Local public Lynx buses with red color at front - are located At Terminal A, level 1, at Commercial Lane spaces A38-A41 and serve the following areas: (current bus fare is $2): - To Downtown Orlando (40 mins): Lynx bus 11 via Orange Avenue; Lynx bus 51via Conway; - To International Drive (60 mins): Lynx Bus 42 . - To Forida Mall /Sea World (45 mins): Lynx bus 111. - To new Sand Lake Road SunRail Station* (3 miles from Airport): take the local Lynx bus stopping at Terminal A, level 1, at Commercial Lane spaces A38-41. Local buses are also available to Winter Park/ Maitland; Lake Buena Vista, Kissimmee, Disney's Maingate, & Walt Disney World.

(Not counting all of the hotel buses or cruise ship buses)

* Uber and Lyft near infinite transport in addition to taxi’s

By Train: * The SunRail runs between DeBary (northwest of Sanford) and Sand Lake Road) For more information on SunRail service call 1-855--RAIL-411 or visit: sunrail.com/default.aspx. NOTE: The Lynx bus located on the A-side of the Terminal, at level 1, commercial lane spaces A38-A41 - connects to the Sand Lake Road SunRail station. For Amtrak service located at 250 Columbia Street, Orlando - 12 miles from the Airport - you can take the Lynx bus 11 to Orange Avenue & Columbia Street - taking a total of 30 minutes. The Amtrak station is about half a mile from the bus stop, down Columbia Street, then left onto Sligh Blvd.

- this is in addition to the new BrightLine

* By Car

- Personal travel, rental car, guests picking you up or local parking lots both on premises and off premises (private lots)

I don’t think Orlando and Zurich compare.

Are you going to walk off the Orlando airport to somewhere else without being on some sort of transportation? No. But you aren’t going to do that at Oslo airport either. You need to take a train or bus for example to Oslo Central Station or elsewhere - similar to Zurich.

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the bus and train stations are that close together. Local buses stop at Terminal A, while the train pulls in to the new intermodal station off Terminal C [1], almost a mile away. At least there's an automated people mover connecting them, but it hardly seems like a convenient interchange.

Buses are not even marked on the airport terminal map, which is split into separate maps for terminals A & B [2] and C [3]. That's going to make things more challenging for people to figure out.

1: https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/train-sta...

2: https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/#map-wayf...

3: https://www.orlandoairports.net/getting-around-mco/#map-wayf...

I mean train has to stop somewhere and Terminal C made the most sense. It’s external to the main airport. A and B are near identical.

Walking to it isn’t a big deal. Not sure if you have been to the airport or any in general but walking is generally accepted. There’s the airport internal shuttle to save you walking an additional mile. It’s a busy airport.

Having to walk for 10 minutes through the airport when your flight leaves in an hour isn't a big deal.

However, it's a different story when you don't even want to be at the airport. At a lot of airports you can step out of a train, walk through the airport following a huge sign saying "BUSES THIS WAY", and step into a bus less than five minutes later. Having a short and well-signed intermodal connection is essential if you expect people to actually use it. Hiding it in an unmarked corner two walks and a people mover ride away isn't exactly what I would call convenient.

I don’t think many airports outside the US are the size and scale of our airports. China maybe

Interesting! I found https://www.orlando-international-airport.com/, which only mentions car rental and undefined "Airport Shuttles"/"Hotel Shuttles"/"Taxis & Limos", and they did not show up on Google Maps. That's indeed quite a lot more.

The Lynx buses at 30/60-minute intervals seem quite usable for most purposes, too bad they don't have a convenient transfer from the train.

The next phase of the train is to the Orlando Convention Center / Universal Studios, then to Disney World, and eventually to Tampa.

Why not do both? Have the train have stops both downtown and at an airport?

If you just want to do stuff downtown that doesn't need a car, take the train to that stop. If you are going to need to rent a car, take the train to the airport.

Depends on the opportunity cost, really.

If stopping at the airport adds 15-20 minutes to the trip to downtown, it probably isn't worth it and you want to run separate trains.

On the other hand, the high-speed train going to Amsterdam Zuid via the shortest possible route literally passes through the airport Schiphol already - a stop only adds 2 minutes or so and is therefore a no-brainer.

To get an answer your question, consider the PI on a grant who's located in, say, Champaign, IL, or Carbondale, IL, and who needs to fly internationally to attend a conference. (Or, perhaps more direly, needs to attend some family emergency.)

With rail alignments going, say, STL-CHM-CHI and STL-CDL-NVL, and with those alignments being wallclock time-competitive with just driving, the opportunity exists now for those PIs not to have to worry about, e.g., the roadworthiness of their cars or whether they'll have to account for traffic for the two- or three-hour commute to the airport.

Extend this to cover other folks who live away from major metropolises but who could be served with better airport access, or college students from those metropolises (or even internationally) whose schools are in places not particularly conveniently served by air, and this plan might start to appear to do measurable good.

To compare this with Europe, flying into FRA out of ORD (after a cramped puddle jumper flight out of STL and several hours' layover) and taking the ICE to Offenburg to visit family for Easter was a thing I did for years, and I found the German side far less agonizing. There were some years when I never even bothered to purchase my Bahn fare until I could get to the DB Reisezentrum in the basement of FRA because the frequency of the trains made it certain I'd not have to wait long.

Isn't that because bar a few exceptions, US cities do not have an historical "city center" in the same sense as cities in europe and latin america?

Every train station I've been to in the Northeast has been within a few minutes walk of a subway station, light rail station, bus hub, or taxi stand. What you mean by "few options" is "no car rental", which is an unfortunate consequence of our auto-centric psychology.

Well, yes, Amtrak in the Northeast is convenient if you want to go downtown at a stop. It’s mostly a poor choice if you want to rent a car and go somewhere else in which case you’re probably better flying or just driving in the first place.

Not sure about car-centric philosophy. It’s about the destination for a given trip. No judgement about it.

When I was in my early 20s, I flew into Providence, RI. I was too young to rent a car, and too poor to take a taxi all the way to my final destination, so I had to take it to the place downtown where the busses all crossed paths. I only learned later that where the taxi dropped me off was about a 5-to-10-minute walk from the Amtrak station. If I'd taken the train, I could have eschewed a leg of my trip (and embarked from a station closer than my local airport).

This was, in fact, one of the experiences which informed my previous statement.

I've made the same trip by car and train. Train is by far the most convenient and relaxed. I would drive about the same distance from home to the local station (those exist) as I would in order to get to the airport, park for free 10 minutes before boarding, and do it at an hour that was not ungodly (which was a necessity for flights for pricing reasons). Every minute dealing with TSA and arcane terminal navigation is worth 10 sitting in a large, seatbelt-free Amtrak seat. I am happy to judge: your characterization sounds like someone who doesn't actually have much experience riding trains - and, specifically, walking out of a train station and navigating to their destination. This is frustrating because you seem rather assured.

I have plenty of experience riding trains and they’re great if e.g. I’m going to midtown Manhattan. They’re far less of an advantage if I * have to* rent a car and go out to visit a company in a suburban office park as is often the case.

Do you really rent cars in that case, rather than use a taxi?

I occasionally have meetings at similar places in Europe. If I'm alone and have time, I generally prefer to take a bus if it's reasonably convenient (at least every 20 minutes, not raining too much, easy to pay for, up to 10 minutes walk at the other end). I quite like the 'thinking time' of walking the last bit.

If a bus isn't reasonable, or (usually) if I'm with a colleague, I'll take a taxi. It wouldn't really occur to me to rent a car.

I rent cars all the time going to suburban office parks and even more so if I’m also going to do a hike in some state park or whatever—where there may not even be cell phone reception. I might be marginally more inclined to get an Uber than do a rental than in years past but only marginally.

In a few weeks I’ll be going to a conference in Monterey and will be doing some other activities around the conference in some parks and I’ll definitely rent a car.

To be clear I won’t generally rent a car if just within eg SF but I’m often going places outside the city where I’m not even staying somewhere I can walk to my destination. And typically I wouldn’t in Europe.

Do mind that it's often more cost effective to take the train and you have more rental options. I've taken the train from WDC to NYC at times because there were better rental options there when travelling further north.

There is absolutely no way I would take a train into NYC for a cheaper rental option requiring me to drive out of the city. Driving to NYC is already my fastest option but I hate doing it so I basically drive an hour in the wrong direction to catch a train.

This is legit the first time I've ever heard someone being in favour of going to an airport outside a city by train rather than going to the city centre. If I am ending at the airport anyway I might as well fly there.

I mean, I guess… how many visitors to Orlando actually go downtown though

It's $80 per person each way for a ticket from west palm beach station to orlando. That's $160 roundtrip. Even for one person, it can be cheaper to rent a car and pay the gas/turnpike tolls than to buy one roundtrip ticket, and you won't be stranded 20 minutes away from downtown and the tourist attractions over at MCO airport.

With current prices this could be a bit of a stretch. A 2 day rental from MIA with Enterprise is $140 for a compact (just checked). I’m sure you can find cheaper but probably no by much. So you are close to $160 all-in with gas and tolls.

You can do a fair amount better that that on price with a major rental company, but it still might make sense to use the train if you are solo. But if you are a duo or trio, the train pricing starts to lose big.

https://i.imgur.com/uSHiZdS.png

If you are willing to risk using one of the lower tier car rental companies, you can really cut the price.

https://i.imgur.com/iOHxxw3.png

Problem is then you're depending on a rental, which your (alleged) reservation doesn't actually guarantee.

You always depend on the business to provide the service reserved whether it is plane, train or automobile. I'd worry more about the flight into/out of MIA than the car rental.

Rental car agencies oversell far more than is typical of most industries, including the airlines.

Airlines, hotels, car rental agencies all overbook as a matter of course. You assert that car rentals are worse than airlines. But you cite no numbers, no sources, so... Maybe?

Not sure it is even the best comparison since we are talking reliability. Airlines manage overbooking very well, but flights delays and cancellations are the reliability issue.

By the time you're done paying for insurance, the nickel and diming on the rental, the tolls, and the physical toll of driving long stretches in a country you are not familiar with, it starts to sound like a better option to take a stress-free train ride and then a Lyft to your destination.

Well, last time I booked a car last minute (from one of the big ones, I think it was Enterprise), they confirmed my confirmation but didn't have any car available when I showed up the next day. I'd imagine the train is somewhat more reliable.

You can rent a Tesla from Hertz for $40-50 per day, and they are currently including the Supercharger fees (at least I didn't get charged for it the last two times I took one).

This seems like a very similar (and big) problem to Europe. Trains are just so expensive. UK it is unreal, I'm pretty sure some days you can fly from London to edinburgh for 1/10th, on a bad day 1/5th of the cost of trains. It just doesn't seem worth it. Clearly something about the economics of trains just doesn't work, especially when compared to mid-distance trips where cheap airlines also exist.

I came here expecting to see that the "free market zero regulation" of the US, and business sense would mean quite a cheap fare for this train, but no, it's just as bad as europe.

Even though they are supposedly the ultimate green mass public transportation, trains really need to get cheaper to be a serious alternative for cars and cheap airlines, as you also point out.

>Trains are just so expensive. UK it is unreal

Yet still jam packed with people

One contribution is that jet fuel is not taxed in the EU.

The UK is an outlier for train ticket prices. There's a huge difference between booking an inflexible ticket in advance, and buying a ticket on the day.

Elsewhere in Europe there's usually less difference. Here in Denmark the cheapest Copenhagen-Århus ticket booked in advance is around £15, and the standard ticket (any time) is £50. London to Manchester is a similar distance, and the price varies from around £20 (supposedly) to £185.

Hmm... I expected the cheapest ticket in England to be less than the cheapest in Denmark.

(Denmark isn't big enough for an equivalent journey to London-Edinburgh, but Sweden is. I notice the Malmö-Stockholm route is so busy the direct trains are mostly fully booked for several days ahead — Britain does have more capacity in return for the expensive fares.)

You pay more money but the experience is different. You can do many things in a train that you can't do in a car like:

- working

- having a meal (and by that I don't mean eating a sandwitch or crisps)

- have a conversation that involve eye contacts

- playing board/card games

- watching a movie

- reading

All of these activities are impossible for a car driver and would make most passenger feeling sick or spreading food everywhere in the car.

So it is not like an apple to apple comparison. The added cost is hardly justified for a short 1h30 drive, but the longer the trip the more it makes a difference.

How are airplanes so cheap ? Airplane fuel is expensive, it takes a larger crew to operate and the planes are more expensive too. Who foots the bill for operating expensive airports ?

Are trains mor expensive purely because regulation costs and operating expenses are passed down in entirety to the customer ?

> Airplane fuel is expensive

No more so than diesel for a locomotive. The formulation is pretty similar. Then, consider that the energy requirements for trains and planes aren't radically different (for long-distance travel). Airplanes fly though the thin air of the stratosphere, while trains try to bore a hole through the thick air near the ground.

> it takes a larger crew to operate

Not really. The person-hours of labor (for the on-board crew) required to operate a segment between two city pairs is usually less for a plane because it spends less time in transit.

In both cases, the crew is unionized and commands high pay and benefits.

In both cases, a centralized dispatcher is required, usually certified.

In both cases, some staff are needed to run the stations and on/off-load baggage and cargo. In both cases, one group of such staff can be "rotated" through the many arrivals/departures that happen throughout the day.

> and the planes are more expensive too

[Citation needed]

This page implies a Siemens Charger (the type of locomotive used by Brightline) costs ~$11m per unit: https://www.businessinsider.com/amtraks-new-diesel-electric-...

While this page implies that a Siemens Venture (the type used by Brightline) costs ~$80m per trainset: https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/07/08/amtrak-cuts-deal-with...

Each train requires 2x locomotives and one set of cars, for a total cost of ~$100m.

A 737 also costs ~$100m new: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/much-does-boeing-737-cost-142...

The Venture set carries about 250 pax, while the 737 carries about 180. But the 737 can complete more trips in a given amount of time compared to a train.

> Who foots the bill for operating expensive airports ?

Generally the people who use it, via ticket prices. O'hare airport is a major profit center for the city of Chicago (check out the city's border--that little nub on the west side is the airport).

> Are trains mor[e] expensive purely because regulation costs and operating expenses are passed down in entirety to the customer ?

It's mostly a combination of:

1. Higher labor costs (because a train takes longer, and the crew requirements are similar).

2. Needing to build and maintain a continuous right of way for hundreds of miles.

3. Less efficient use of capital because the same amount of equipment can make fewer trips in a given amount of time.

My wife and I live in Miami, and she's been waiting for this for years.

She's a huge Disney fan but it's a bit of a haul to drive to Orlando. Now it'll be cake to go to Disney.

Ive ridden it between miami and Fort Lauderdale. Its very comfortable and a much much nicer experience than driving but its not for the price conscious. It makes me wish the us had a much better rail system.

How is this 125 mph when it's same travel time as by car?

YT vid says Journey Time: 3 hr 33 min

Google maps says this 3h30m by car MCO to MIA.

Security overhead on the train looks medium, with TSA-style scanners but otherwise normal walk-up access when train arrives.

1h flight (tho add 1-2h for airport overhead)

Price: $79 (Smart), $149 (Premium)

Brightline takes a bit of a longer path (straight to the coast and down) than can via car (more direct).

For most of the route, it cannot go that fast. It is mid-speed rail, at best.

If you fly or drive, it’s about the same time but you arrive feeling drained. The train is cheaper and you arrive feeling refreshed. Travel should be pleasant and enjoyable, like the golden days of aviation!

That wasn't the question -- the question was why a 125mph train takes the same time to travel as it takes a 70mph car to make the same trip from station to station? Calling it a "125mph" train (because that's its max speed) when the average speed is 68mph seems dishonest.

the train has to stop at intermediate stations.

I wondered the same thing. I think 125 mph is peak, not average, speed. I think average speed is something like 70 mph.

thx all, yeah, suspected as much. I guess it's also their maiden trip, so maybe they'll tune up the route in the future. I think when Acela started in Northeast it took awhile before it was regularly up to speed

Seriously TSA security??

Add Naples next

America and trains: the little engine that could ?

America has removed more miles of railway than most other countries have ever had. I hold out hope that high-speed rail is still possible, at least between the major population centers in each region. The good news is that airports and flying are abjectly miserable experiences, which makes people willing to look at alternatives.

Flying is miserable because consumers demand low prices. There is no forces that would change this when applied to trains.

The expense of railway lies in acquiring the land and laying the track in the first place. Once that's done, the operational costs are negligible relative to an airline. Of course, getting those land rights is often an insurmountable nightmare in its own right.

Well, other than the interest on the bonds, because no one pays for any infrastructure or otherwise with outright cash.

That's no different than how any piece of infrastructure is paid for. No one is paying cash to repave the roads either. Airports are so expensive they would be impossible without financing.

> Once that's done, the operational costs are negligible relative to an airline.

I'll need to see some evidence for that claim.

1. The relatively slower speed of trains means that the amount of person-hours of labor for the crew is similar or greater than for a plane. And railroad employees generally have even better union contracts than airline employees.

2. Airlines don't have to build a track, but neither do they need to maintain a track. That cost is not negligible.

There are fewer crewmembers, though. The FAA requires a 50:1 ratio for flight attendants. (Famously, JetBlue in the US ripped out two rows of seats in its original A320s to get to a round multiple of 50, and then used the extra room to get the largest seat pitch in economy.)

To give a bit of comparison, there are 16k employees at JR Central, who operate the Tokaido Shinkansen in addition to normal rail lines; there are 90k employees at Delta. (JR Central has a market cap of $26B and Delta has a market cap of $23B.)

Notice that I did not specify the number of crew members, just the number of labor hours.

That's fair.

I suppose one benefit of trains is all the intermediate traffic. Every flight attendant is only really serving an A->B flight, or an A->B->C flight with an intermediate stop.

Trains can make many stops and have higher turnover, and combined with the generally higher capacity of a train, I wonder if the passenger-hours per employee ends up being a wash.

>There is no forces that would change this when applied to trains.

I'm not sure how successful it's been, but this article[1] for Deutsche Bahn's "ICE" first class makes it look attractive to me.

I think because space isn't as much a premium, the upcharge for first class on a train can be a much smaller jump than the economy -> first class jump on a plane.

[1] https://onemileatatime.com/deutsche-bahn-ice-first-class-rev...

First class on a train relative to standard seating is also much less of a big deal than planes in general.

Isn't the counter-example in America cars? It's definitely cheaper to have an econo-box but instead we drive 8 seat tanks to get groceries.

You never know when you'll need to pick up a sofa on sale at Costco.

Plus at Costco couches only come in 2-packs even though lots of the time just one would last you the week.

Flying can get expensive fairly quickly.

One major source of this is landing fees; at heavily congested airports the price to get a new slot, or buy someone out of an existing one, is quite high because of a lack of space and alternatives. Most of the airports in the Northeast are chronically congested, to the point where I believe DCA and all the New York area airports have caps on flight movements. And there's no 'cheap' airport in the NYC area either, which is a common tactic for Ryanair et al (fly into an airport over 50 miles away for the cheaper landing fees, which means cheaper tickets, but also probably means the passenger is making up the difference getting to their final destination.)

High speed rail tends to be better because trains are supported not by air but by rails on the ground. Weight penalties are significantly reduced.

One aspect of HSR vs air that I have bit of issues but are rarely mentioned is what car people call NVH characteristic - Noise, Vibration, and Harshness - are much worse in HSR than airplanes. It's a bit of in-between with high speed taxing, windy day in a high rise building and rollercoaster ride all the way to the destination.

Airplanes are magic carpets once up there, and that can be more comfortable than trains.

Which high speed train are you comparing to?

I find aircraft much noisier than any train. More like magic vacuum cleaners, they seem to be the best use of noise-cancelling headphones and earplugs aren't uncommon.

Vibration depends on how well the track is maintained, but there are certainly fewer surprises (turbulence). There are videos online of people balancing coins on trains — I did this myself once from Malmö to Copenhagen Airport, though that is only 200km/h.

I'm not sure what harshness is in this context.

Tokaido Shinkansen N700/700S. There are lots of upsides to HSR such as extremely good seat pitch and total absence of security theater, and it's true that the airliners has a loud constant white noise, but when it comes to noise and vibrations, I feel airplanes less... intermittent and less interrupting. Those Recaro camp chairs aren't too bad either.

Nah. Flying is awesome. Especially without the TSA.

But Brightline is technically HSR running on a converted line.

Brightline is the sweat spot for HSR in the US, between population centers annoyingly long to drive but annoyingly short to fly. Long haul air transport isn’t going away, but these short hops are the best places to build HSR. Tangentially, this frees up airport gates for routes that cannot be accomplished by rail.

My understanding is that their future rail segments are focused on these routes.

Brightline is only really HSR under the 1970s pre TGV/Bullet Train definition. Most of the world has moved on to using 250km/h (155mph) as the cut off with many new lines over 300km/h (185mph).

We can quibble over the definition of high speed rail in speed, but what’s important is that light rail enables transportation for people who can’t or prefer not to drive, who can’t afford a car for these trips, and overall takes cars off the road. Faster isn’t always better depending on the distance traveled (time saved going much faster over these shorter routes is going to be marginal vs cross country); sometimes faster than the status quo is fast enough.

I agree that regional services are generally more important than long distance HSR. It's absurd that the 80 mile trip from Oakland to Sacramento takes 2 hours.

FWIW, Brightline is very traditional heavy rail. It even uses locomotives rather than the more efficient diesel multiple units typically used on similar non-electrified routes in Europe.

For stopping services there are big advantages to going electric since they are able to accelerate much faster. The electrification work on Caltrain between San Francisco and San Jose is almost complete. This should make most trips much faster though probably won't make much difference to the express services.

Light rail usually refers to the in-city services operated with smaller street-car/tram like vehicles. These tend not to be very fast with top speeds around 50mph when operating on dedicated track, but it doesn't usually matter as they stop very frequently.

FWIW loco vs MU operation is still a valid debate to have with rail. The TGV in France and AVE in Spain use locomotives as well.

The are not called locomotives, but power cars.

The real difference is electric vs. diesel. I don't think there is any diesel in operation anywhere running at TGV, ICE or AVE speeds.

Well, there is (or was) the ICE-TD (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICE_TD), which has a top speed of 200 km/h (124 mph). I don't think it's technically impossible to have diesel trains with higher speeds, it's just that if you want speeds higher than 200 km/h, you have to build dedicated high speed tracks anyway, and then you are probably going to electrify them. The problem with diesel is more the acceleration (which can also be seen if you compare gasoline and electric cars), which restricts the number of stops, but that's not a problem for HSR.

I know the ICE-TD. Power is less than 2000 kW, whereas electrical highspeed trains have 4 to 5 times of that.

Probably it would he impossible to build much more powerful diesel trains. But typically costs and problems grow in non-linear way.

I believe the only attempts have been gas turbine trains, but nearly all of those have been derailed by spikes in fuel prices.

It is mid-speed rail. The top speed is claimed to be 125 MPH.

Yes. Very similar to the British Inter-City 125 trains, which were mid-speed Diesel from 1975. Good, successful technology. \

But the track Brightline is using has sections as slow as 40MPH.

This is an issue with HSR generally, as well. There are often sections with very low speed.

One section of Brightline crosses a 98 year old bridge over the St. Lucie River. It has to go very slow. This new usage has already been a huge hassle for maritime traffic.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRMmuawmxnUFHoyqZJq3d...

>The good news is that airports and flying are abjectly miserable experiences

I have always had fantastic airport and flying experiences.

Of course, I pay today almost exactly what I paid for airline tickets in the 80s and 90s, adjusting for inflation.

That means I don't buy $90 fares on airlines where I have to scramble like a pig at a trough for a seat.

Where do you fly out of?

At SEA it's pretty miserable unless you pay for PreCheck and Clear, which just feels like TSA making the entire thing shitty and then shaking you down for money to make it not shitty.

If you fly any amount paying for PreCheck is just part of the deal. It’s the way it is.

It's still abjectly miserable; SEA has such horrid staffing issues even PreCheck lines might get into the parking lots.

Trains have either no security theater to speak of (Acela) or have very minimal stuff (Brightline)

I disagree that airport security is "security theater".

To support this claim I present data on airline hijackings from 1990 to 2021: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Graph-showing-the-Number...

Those numbers are even more striking when viewed against the tremendous increase in flights over that time period and there is a multitude of reasons why hijackings have decreased, but the ever-so-slightly increased chance of interception at a security checkpoint is assuredly one of them.

And a list of airline bombing incidents 1933-2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_airliner_bombing_a...

There have been no fatalities due to bombs on an American airline since Pan Am 103, and as someone who was flying prior to and immediately after Flight 103, I can assure you that TSA-era post-9/11 security measures are nothing (thanks to advances in screening technology) compared to post-103 security measures.

Except for shoes and belts, most of the security pains people dislike are a result of the Lockerbie Bombing.

And with PreCheck you can keep your shoes on ;-)

Even with Clear and first class seats, SEA is no picnic, I try to fly out of Paine Field any time I can... for an international flight, I'll even drive up to Vancouver to avoid SEA.

> At SEA it's pretty miserable unless you pay for PreCheck and Clear

But PreCheck is $78 per 5 years, and Clear doesn't really have much benefit if you already have PreCheck (it gets you to the front the PreCheck line, which at most airports, is already very short).

Passenger trains, we lead the world in freight rail.

(outside China, I have no idea whether Chinese freight rail is or isn't great).

We? I don't think I am part of your team.

Yes, your message has a point, but don't delute it by using sloppy language.

America is best, leading the world in GDP and Freight rail.

On the not so bright side [notice the pun only afterwards...] they have a very high death rate.

American pedestrians and drivers obviously have not learned yet that trains can be fast.

Source: https://spiegel.de a couple of days ago

Nearly every week in Palm Beach County there's a story in the news about subscribe getting hit, either in person or in car. The day of the first Miami to Orlando train someone was hit by a train.

Not sure why downvoted. You are right.

Nearly 100 people have been killed by this train since 2019. This is an incredibly dangerous transportation mode for the number of passengers it handles.

> None of Brightline's deaths were caused by crew error or faulty equipment, but were all related to suicides or pedestrians and drivers trying to cross and beat the trains, according to law enforcement and federal reports.

The article says all grade crossings have barriers, so the video showing a collision shows the car driving around the lowered barriers.

However, with the size and weight of American vehicles, I'm surprised they didn't use full-barrier crossings — there's the potential to derail a train.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline#Deaths

Full barriers create additional risks. You need to make sure that no car (and any passengers) have been caught between the closed barriers. Which adds costs.

I'd say most European high speed lines are completely free of level crossings. (Europe has a lot of variation, so I might miss some exception.) Which is even more expensive.

It certainly adds costs, but it can be automatic or remote systems (e.g. cameras monitored by the signaller, or RADAR/LIDAR systems). However, I don't have an idea whether there are 10s or 100s of crossings.

There are lines at roughly this speed in Europe with level crossings, e.g. the UK (125mph), Finland (85mph), Norway (100mph), Sweden (125mph), but there's not much detail on the speeds allowed for various types of crossing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_crossings_by_country

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Level_crossings_in_the_United_...

I mean in their defense the most important input into these numbers is the relative idiocy and sobriety of Florida residents.

Florida Man...

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