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Brightline built Miami to West Palm Beach on rails it already owned, I think much of the new extension from West Palm Beach to Orlando has been on existing rails too.

Do trains require more staff per seat? Amtrak trains seem to have 2 staff in the car and I assume 2 engineers, and roughly (5 car consist of 72 seats) 360 passengers, vs 4-6 people for 180 people on an A320.

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IIRC the bigger component was the time issue. When the flight is an hour and the train ride is 3 hours it makes a big difference.

But I would imagine it's seat density (more seats in a plane fuselage vs a train car) and sold seats vs empty seats (airlines have a pretty efficient system for filling seats based on dynamic pricing, due to the fact that the flight departures are timed and gated).

I'll try to find the article, it had numbers.

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