LET'S TAKE A TRAIN RIDE.

Earlier today, Brightline's Orlando service started carrying passengers.

“Opening Orlando fulfills our ultimate business model. We have seen incredible enthusiasm from the business and tourism industries eager to travel between Central and South Florida,” says Patrick Goddard, Brightline president. “As we start service to Orlando for peak holiday seasons, I encourage everyone to check calendars, make plans, visit our website or app and reserve a seat now.”

The Fourth Estate covered the first trip.  Can we do something about reporters describing trains as "chugging along?"

Transportation pundits are reading all sorts of things into that service opening.

Amtrak’s decades-old monopoly on intercity passenger rail travel will fall in the coming weeks when Florida becomes home to the fastest American trains outside the Northeast Corridor.

Brightline, the only private passenger railroad in the country, is slated to open its newest station here later this year, providing a train connection between Orlando International Airport and South Florida in three hours. Meanwhile, work is progressing on high-speed projects in Western states and Texas, and Amtrak is eyeing its biggest expansion in 52 years.

Brightline's multiple frequencies are the antithesis of Amtrak's Silver Meteor and Silver Star, which are what remains of the New York - Florida service of years ago, timed to provide late afternoon or evening departures for the rich men and women north of Richmond, given generous recovery margins south of Jacksonville, and, in the case of the Star, sent all over Florida in order to serve both Tampa and Miami without splitting or combining the train in Orlando.  Close enough for government work, but not exactly a value proposition for somebody in Miami with business in Jacksonville.  That segment of the market is small but present: I spoke with a passenger in the diner who was headed from north Florida to a meeting in Miami.  Now if Brightline, Amtrak, and the Commuter Rail operators out of Miami and Orlando would coordinate connections and sell some sort of pass good on any train.

Brightline offer the mix of frequency and timings that Cold Spring Shops has endorsed for a long time.

Up to now, Brightline has operated much like a commuter service through South Florida, but its Orlando station will be the nation’s first non-Amtrak passenger train link between two metro areas in four decades — a project with nearly $6 billion in private investment. Although not a true high-speed operation, the Brightline Florida service will surpass speeds of 125 mph in some areas — the nation’s fastest train outside the D.C.-to-Boston region.

Five years after Brightline opened its 67-mile service between Miami and West Palm Beach, passengers fill the five-car trains for sporting events and festivals, while commuters use them to get to jobs. Students receive discounted passes for educational excursions.

Brightline uses business tycoon Henry Flagler’s original Miami train station and his Florida East Coast Railway, built in the late 1880s. The station had fallen into disrepair and was surrounded by parking lots. The raised platform is now the hub of 1.5 million square feet of development, with office, commercial and residential spaces built by Brightline’s owner.

Now, if Wes Edens, who has ownership interests in Brightline and in the Milwaukee Bucks, would sit down with the Illinois and Wisconsin departments of transportation and, oh, look at real estate between the Third Ward and the Deer District.  The two-hourly frequencies and the Siemens rakes are already on the property.

There are, predictably, complications, not a few of which are the effect of that Public Money.

High costs and a complicated federal approval process that can drag on for years have stalled projects. Meanwhile, rail advocates and industry leaders say a decades-old “Buy America” mandate adds complexity. The policy requires federally funded transportation infrastructure to use U.S.-made materials, a challenge for a fledgling domestic industry.

Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a self-described evangelist for high-speed rail and the former managing director of Texas Central, the company developing the Houston-to-Dallas line, has called for speeding up the regulatory process, particularly for rail projects that he said would benefit the environment.

“It’s a little bit crazy that we have an environmental policy act that hinders the development of projects that are fundamentally really good for the environment,” Moulton said at a recent conference in Washington. “There should be clear timelines.”

The United States has some of the most expensive transportation projects in the world, said Eric Goldwyn, an urban planning professor at New York University. His research found that costs associated with governance issues, such as environmental reviews, and a U.S. tendency to build larger stations with longer construction timelines have made some projects cost-prohibitive.

While the infrastructure law made money available, experts say the biggest challenge is whether political and public support for rail can shift in a nation that moves by automobile. Traffic congestion and environmental concerns have not been significant incentives to reducing car dependency, said Robert Cervero, professor emeritus at UC-Berkeley’s City and Regional Planning Department, who cited increased car ownership during the pandemic as transit declined.

“We’re historically a far more car-oriented society, so it’s really hard for high-speed rail to get a foothold in the United States relative to some of the other advanced economies,” he said.

On the other hand, there are days when Chicago's expressways are so fouled up that it's 75 minutes from Lake-Cook Road to the Loop, which is to say the running time of current Hiawathas between the Milwaukee airport station and Union Station.

Amtrak's cheering section have been calling attention to how short Brightline's stretches of fast trains are, compared with how much of the Alton Route is now set up for 110 mph running.  That's good, yes, although we still have to talk about how the four or five corridor trains, plus the Texas Eagle, have to slog between St. Louis and Alton, and Joliet and Chicago.

Meanwhile, Reason's transportation division weigh in with their compare-and-contrast, a few miles of relatively easily built track in Florida with a slog building the Merced - Fresno Electric Air Line.  Plus a lot of stock footage of European steam trains for the ferroequinologist.

An accompanying article summarizes the reservations.

Mike Reininger, CEO of Brightline, told Reason that passenger rail makes commercial sense under specific conditions, such as the case in Florida, where it connects two populous, tourist-friendly cities that are about 250 miles apart. At that distance, Reininger says, "It is too far to drive and too short to fly. You can approximate the time of flying significantly, improve the time of driving, and you can offer it at a price point that makes it an economic proposition."

There has been one other ambitious effort to build high-speed rail in the U.S.—in California. But that project turned into something so "foolish" that it's "almost a crime," according to Quentin L. Kopp, the former state senator who was crucial in rallying support for a $10 billion bond measure to build high-speed rail in California. He became a fierce opponent of the project when it ran out of money and the agency in charge, he says, broke its promises to voters.

The 520-mile railway between San Francisco and Los Angeles was supposed to be completed by 2020. But after fifteen years of construction, they've only laid track for a 170-mile stretch in the Central Valley. The project, which has received more than $20 billion in state and federal subsidies, is now projected to cost over $128 billion.

Following on its success in Florida, Brightline is also starting to develop a high-speed rail line out west—connecting Las Vegas to Los Angeles. The 218-mile line will have just a handful of stops and plans to reach speeds over 186 mph. But the company is pursuing about $3 billion worth in federal subsidies to complete the project, or about a third of the total estimated cost. Though not even close to the amount of money California needs to finish its project, Robert Poole, the director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation, is "skeptical" once federal money gets involved at all in large infrastructure projects.

"It becomes far less of a business venture. And much more of this attitude that we can do grand things because we don't have to worry about what it costs," says Poole.

Until it's time to maintain the project, whether it's a bridge in Minneapolis or a stadium roof in Milwaukee.  At the ribbon cutting, nobody asked about inspecting the seals or scraping the pigeon poop off the beams.  So, too, might it be with the Alton Route, or the Michigan Central for Detroit, both of which have stretches of 110 mph running, both of which are within that 250 - 300 mile range, both of which have relatively infrequent trains under Amtrak auspices.

In case the Brightline extension creates a preference cascade, Ellis Simon considers a few other routes in the United States where either public or private money might be going to faster trains.  Will I last long enough to see any of them run?