FLORIDA MAN FRIDAY.

Yes, today is Monday, which means the peanut gallery reactions to Brightline's Orlando extension up and running came in over the weekend.  Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds gets to take a dig at California's faster train from Goodrum Junction to South LaPorte, er, Merced to Fresno.  The comments to the post are predictably negative, with people suggesting that the fix for congested interstates and maltimed traffic lights is to build more lanes of road.

A WPTV report has the obligatory Florida Man content.

The first Brightline train traveling from South Florida to Orlando rolled out Friday morning, completing a massive expansion project that cost the company $6 billion and took four years to complete.

The inaugural ride to central Florida departed Miami at 6:50 a.m.

It was scheduled to arrive in West Palm Beach at 7:45 a.m. and then depart for Orlando International Airport about 15 minutes later. However, a fatal Brightline train crash in Delray Beach delayed the route for more than an hour.

The train eventually left West Palm Beach at about 9 a.m. en route to Orlando.

The first responders and the coroner might be less dilatory in Florida: when a Metra train or Amtrak's regional service has a close encounter with a pedestrian in Chicagoland, that turns into a three hour delay.  Scroll down for the obligatory hand-wringing about those deaths on the level crossings.

The Associated Press analyzed federal data beginning in 2019, finding that Brightline trains have the highest death rate in the U.S., fatally striking 98 people since Miami-West Palm Beach operations began.

That's a rate of about one death for every 32,000 miles that its trains travel. However, none of the 98 deaths have been found to be Brightline's fault.

I wonder whether a few pedestrian overpasses might be useful where the train runs close to the beach. The highest point in Florida would be somewhere on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and grade separating the railroad didn't make sense when Henry Flagler built the original Florida East Coast.

That article also includes carping about a drawbridge, with pleasure boaters upset about the draw being closed for trains.  I'm going to return to that story another day.  For now let me note that Connecticut's priviligentsia raised similar objections to electrifying the Shore Line north of New Haven and adding more trains.  There was a timetable collector went to the hearings with some Depression era timetables featuring more frequent trains than Amtrak and the Commuter Rail authorities wanted to add.

Treasure Coast columnist Laurence Reisman joins the skeptics.

Pardon me if I’m the only one not excited by Brightline’s hyped start of its Miami-to-Orlando route.

Yes, it’s historic. Trains have never run at up to 125 mph in this part of the world.

Yes, it would be cool to take a nice, new train from Miami to Orlando and back.

Yes, I enjoy traveling by rail ― when it makes sense, which is almost never around here.

He's bewailing the lack of any connectivity through the state, which is a problem preceding Amtrak. In part that's dictated by geography, with Lake Okeechobee and the Everglades smack in the middle of the southern half of the state, and a passenger rail network originally set up for overnight travel between snowy climes and the sunlands.  Finish the extension to Tampa, add service north to Jacksonville, and consider another fast line, Orlando to Tallahassee and Pensacola, perhaps by way of Gainesville, with frequency and connectivity, and see what happens.  Mr Reisman ... I am not making this up, go read the column, dismisses claims that Brightline is a stalking horse for more "hazardous freight trains."  I can't help but wonder, though, whether he's miffed that the train doesn't stop near him.

I’m just like the vast majority of Treasure Coast residents, stuck in a place where there won’t be service anytime soon. Meantime, we’ll see up to 32 trains a day more, face delays and pay for fire-rescue officials to scrape victims off the rails when they are struck ― accidentally, of course — by trains moving faster than the vast majority of us have ever driven on an interstate.

News flash: those interstates are slow, and perhaps some of those grade crossing crashes involving impatient motorists happen, because it's impossible to provide enough road capacity for people to be able to achieve expressway speeds in thickly settled areas.  And, seriously?  "The airport in Sanford is almost two hours away from my home, but not a zoo like Orlando’s real airport."

The marketing challenge for Passenger Rail, and that has been true from the beginning of common carriage, whether by train, motor bus, inland waterways boat, or air, is enticing the group travellers, whether families or car-poolers to leave the driving to somebody else.

With Brightline beginning its trips from South Florida to Orlando on Friday, WPTV wanted to compare the prices and times if someone decided to drive instead of taking the train.

When it comes to time, WPTV reporter Kate Hussey arrived in Orlando 40 minutes faster by taking the train compared to WPTV reporter Dave Bohman.

It took Brightline about two hours while driving took two hours and 40 minutes.

Bohman encountered some rush hour traffic while leaving South Florida but was not slowed by any crashes en route to Central Florida.

Don't you love that "not slowed by any crashes?" Drive-time radio includes regular "traffic and weather" reports, which call attention to where the delays are, and the only thing more certain than the Bears sucking is one or more of Chicago's expressways tied up by a crash: and the pedestrian and motorist deaths as a consequence of car crashes seem to be a cost of doing business, rather than a reason to, oh, slow the cars or price the roads as scarce resources or provide more overpasses.  The convenience, however, of going on your own schedule and sharing the expenses matters.

An adult fare on Brightline costs $79 per person from West Palm Beach to Orlando. Driving the route using Florida's Turnpike costs $92 for gas, wear and tear (calculated based on Federal Reimbursement Mileage calculations), $16 for tolls for a total of $108.

That $108 figure would stay the same if you have a car of four people. However, a Brightline trip with four people (two adults and two children) would cost $236.

In addition, if you take Brightline with your family of four the total increases to $270 if you take a $34 rideshare vehicle to a theme park from the Orlando station.

If you drive to Orlando, the total of your trip rises to $153 or $158 to account for $45 for parking or $50 for weekend parking at a theme park.

Brightline, in common with Amtrak and the Commuter Rail operators, might want to look into family fares.  I suspect a lot of those youngsters headed for the Field Museum or the Shedd Aquarium at weekends are on the train thanks to Metra's promotional pricing.  On the train, kids don't have to be strapped into safety seats, which is required in the family car, and in the rideshare.