Heads up!!!

Second BrightRed is on the way to West Palm Beach now.

Get your camera ready!! Get it ready!!!

https://www.thenextmiami.com/brightl...iQrO_uqE4EWwQM

Starting on November 1, 2021. Brightline trains is back! You can purchase a ticket.

Service will resume on November 8th.



https://www.facebook.com/14845507285...9170/?sfnsn=mo

The trains have been wizzing by my house...can't wait!

https://www.fox5vegas.com/news/new-b...iJAMMoAKQ6TM_k

New Brightline station to be built for future railway connecting Southern Nevada to California

https://www.wftv.com/news/local/repo...CmlvjNo55yCgDY

Report: High-speed rail connecting OIA, Orange County Convention Center cheaper than expected

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/lo...xkfh_gx5XrHyHU

Brightline planning 320-mile Florida passenger rail route from Miami to Tampa by 2028

https://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/...LWE6rSsIGqWUiQ

Brightline may reach a dozen total stations between Miami, Orlando and Tampa

Brightline Florida : Connecting Tampa to Orlando
 

Hi all,

We have a video for Aventura and Boca Raton station, but they haven't officially groundbreaking for Boca Raton yet. Not yet.

• Video Link

Tri-Rail trains are too wide and maybe too heavy to fit the platforms in Brightline's station in downtown Miami.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...256500141.html

Brightline is certainly justified in selecting modern, lightweight rolling stock for its service when the rest of the US railroad industry is back in the stone age. I mean, this is all you need to know:

1905 is 3 years before Ford came out with the Model T.

However, it is concerning if TriRail contributed millions in taxpayer money towards Miami Central Station and reviewed the final construction drawings, only to have Brightline or their GC pull a bait and switch or just plain shoddy construction. It seems like they paid a lot less attention to quality for platforms 4 and 5 (where TriRail will berth) than they did for Platforms 1-3 where Brightline trains berth.

The whole station should have been a public initiative and a municipal endeavor instead of it being led by a private operator with taxpayer checks written to them hoping they do a major terminal station correctly when they have no experience in doing so.

South Florida train network, Brightline, updates Polk leaders on expansion plans into Tampa

Dustin Wyatt
The Ledger
Dec. 9, 2021


"As Brightline works to extend its South Florida train system through Orlando and into Tampa, a leader with the private rail company gave a progress report during a local transportation meeting Thursday.

Yes — the plan is for the high-speed train to eventually pass through Polk County, which would allow residents to get to neighboring metropolitan areas without relying on I-4. But it's so far from reality that little is known at this point about Polk's section of track, where stations would go within the county, and when those stations could open.

A Polk County station "has always been a part of the vision," Christine Kefauver, Brightline's senior vice president of corporate development, told elected county and city leaders with Polk's Transportation Planning Organization. "It's just a matter of when that happens."

https://www.theledger.com/story/news...ce/6427927001/

Construction quality issues aside, MiamiCentral is notable because the planning and design is so much better than what public agencies have done. There's a few good ones like Denver's Union Station, but many new commuter terminals tend to be oversized, underwhelming and poorly integrated with the city.

This is SunRail's downtown Orlando station:
https://goo.gl/maps/iHCwPEXsdMS8g9hU6

Here is the TRE/TEXRail station in Fort Worth:
https://goo.gl/maps/vL6AcQFbKskZoPJJ9

MiamiCentral is a lot closer to a Japanese train station than anything else in America, with dense mixed-uses clustered tightly around the platforms and direct connection to Metrorail/Metromover.

Brightline has never nor will ever use those platforms, TriRail will. TriRail should have paid far more attention to their quality than Brightline.
From what I've read so far from the pdf linked earlier, it is the Bombardier door jams vertical clearances causing the problem with an 0.8 of an inch clearance. and the Rotem BiLevels causing the problems with the weight. At least the most limiting problems with both issues. The weight problem is more associated with the fixed direct concrete slabs vs using regular ballast, and higher wheel vibration forces with the fixed direct concrete.

I suppose there are many engineering options available to fix the issues. TriRail will probably ask for the most expensive solution, Brightline the least expensive solution. Time will tell. Of course, TriRail will want to fix all the blame in Brightline, but they have dropped the ball with active quality assurance with work on their platforms. The time to identify the problem was during construction, not during the testing phase.

I heard a radio commercial for this yesterday and figured there would be a thread here.

I’ve got no real interest in anywhere in Florida north of Bal Harbor, but is this really a viable park and ride option for people? I would think the problem is what do you do when you get to Palm Beach or Orlando or wherever, just take Uber everywhere?

Your answer is the same as what do you do when you fly between these two cities. The other intercity transport choice is to drive in your own vehicle or vehicle for hire, in which case the solution is already at hand.

Except nobody flies from Miami to Palm Beach and almost nobody does from Miami to Orlando.

It's really a train for tourists which is fine because FL gets a lot of them. Stations at Disney World, I-Drive, MCO airport, Port Canaveral/KSC, Port of Miami, and close enough to Port of Ft Lauderdale for easy bus transfers make it a good alternative to someone from out of town needing to rent a car. I know I'd use it at least.

But none of those stations are open yet and the current line is pretty useless. The longer term plan makes some sense though.

Fortress-Backed Rail Company Brightline Gets an Ally in California’s Treasurer

Romy Varghese
Tue, December 21, 2021
Bloomberg

"California Treasurer Fiona Ma’s support for a costly private rail project to shuttle gamblers back-and-forth from the outskirts of Los Angeles to Las Vegas is no secret.

When housing nonprofits argued in late 2019 that California’s deepening housing crisis deserved all of the state’s allotment of subsidized financing, Ma rejected that idea. Some affordable housing developers got shut out, and the rail project won its entire request, about 15% of California’s limited annual allocation of the funding resource.

What’s less well known is the influence that the train’s developer Brightline Holdings -- a company controlled by the $50 billion private equity giant Fortress Investment Group -- had on the process..."

https://news.yahoo.com/fortress-back...142857504.html

I'm not sure what the legal responsibilities are here, it would depend on the specifics of the contract between Brightline and Tri-Rail, and between Brightline and their GC.

There's probably blame to go around (Tri-Rail should have raised these issues within 1 year of substantial completion on MiamiCentral) but Brightline also delivered a platform that was not built to the approved drawings. I'm sure Tri-Rail never agreed to accept the platforms as-is; part of the agreement was that the platforms would be built to their specifications, but they clearly were not.

The modifications needed to make the platforms work - likely modifications to the railcars rather then the platforms - aren't huge, but they're also not free. To overhaul Tri-Rail's whole fleet will probably take several million dollars and delay the start of service into MiamiCentral. So the parties need to figure out who is responsible for this cost.

https://www.gobrightline.com/press-r...xcCyuvmtGd8wLg

BRIGHTLINE COMMENCES CONSTRUCTION ON A MAJOR PART OF ITS BOCA STATION