Passenger Trains > Brightline to Add More South Florida Stops

The “non-stop” “endpoint” train meme fails again. They should have had these stops from the beginning.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/broward/fl-ne-more-brightline-stations-south-florida-20190710-fyoj3ga5v5emnas3ziiq72qi5i-story.html

Posted from iPhone

To gain more ridership, it would be nice to make some more stops between West Palm Beach, Ft. Lauderdale, and Miami. While I have never ridden VirginTrains, I did a trip to Southern Florida and rode Amtrak to get down there and while I was there, I rode Tri-Rail a few times. I must say that many of the towns along the Brightline route-the downtown areas are right along the FEC tracks, unlike the CSX Line used by Amtrak and Tri Rail. I think having a VirginTrains Stop at Ft. Lauderdale Airport would be great especially since there are not just people taking flights. There are probably a lot of corporations very close by. It's probably not a bad idea to have a station in Boca Raton. I used to know people who had a house there.

As for Tri-Rail running on the FEC, I remember there have been proposals for them to run as far as Jupiter. It would be great if that could happen and have them stop at many of the towns along the FEC.

Passfanatic Wrote:
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> As for Tri-Rail running on the FEC, I remember
> there have been proposals for them to run as far
> as Jupiter. It would be great if that could happen
> and have them stop at many of the towns along the
> FEC.

At least initially the TriRail Service to Jupiter is slated to be only north of West Palm Beach. TriRail trains are slated to cross over from TriRail to FECR north of West Palm Beach on a newly built crossover that was completed recently, and then proceed to Jupiter with a few stops on the way.

Also remember TriRail and Brightline cannot use the same platforms due to different platform height requirements. So station that are served by both TriRail and Brightline will require additional platform tracks to enable that, like is the case at Miami Central. It is safe to surmise that Brightline will not be serving any of the TriRail stations between West Palm Beach and Jupiter.

The new Miami Brightline station has made it into the movies but as in most movies, not in an accurate way.  The primary subject in the film (name forgotten) was traveling to an interview using Brightline. The nice train interior got some good exsposure as did the outside of the train. Only problem was she was traveling to Bradengton, FL,  not Miami!  Brightline doesn't even go there. 

Virgin Trains / BrighttLine seems to be sounding out which towns may be interested in future train stations.  We had a recent thread about their confirmed conversations with Fort Lauderdale airport (in Dania Beach), and with Hollywood FL.  And, they told Fort Pierce they were considering adding a Treasure Coast (Martin, Indian River, and St Lucie counties) stop.

Jupiter or Stuart to Miami airport would be an attractive market, considering Uber etc can be $125-150 one way.  But the BrightLine doesn't go the airport.  You'd have to change at Miami Central, and carry your gear over to the MetroMover rail.

That is true about the platform height restrictions at Miami Central. Yes, VirginTrains Brightline can only stop at high level platforms, I believe. Tri Rail's passenger cars can only stop at low level platforms. Here in the Northeast, being that Amtrak's Capitol Limited ends in DC, it is restricted to which track to do its station work. Fortunately, at DC, there are both high and low level platforms.

North of WPB and up to the Orlando area, it would be very good if a few stops were added. I know that I have heard Stuart. People won't just want to ride the train from the greater Miami area to Disney or Orlando Int'l Airport. There will probably be many people who will want to head to the Treasure Coast too.

Site selection for a station on the Space Coast is more or less done. What I hear is it will be at a FECR/Brightline owned piece of land adjacent to the FECR Yard in Cocoa-Rockledge, with an associated business park development. An ideal situation given the burst of growth in ancillary business driven by the sapce program, what with Beoing, SpaceX and others moving in in a big way.
 

If BrightLine interests don't already control the area around the proposed station, chances of the station happening will diminish.

Posted from Android

Lackawanna484 Wrote:
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> If BrightLine interests don't already control the
> area around the proposed station, chances of the
> station happening will diminish.

Yup. And in Cocoa-Rockledge they own a huge chunk of land where in the past they had a container transhipment facility or something like that which is just lying vacant unused at present.