Brightline Ridership and Revenue

electricron wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 12:05 pm 5.5 million passengers is very good, but not as great as they hoped. Amtrak last year had slightly less than 30 million passengers, nationally. And to break that down somewhat, about a third of that 30 million, around 10 million, comes from NEC trains.
Therefore, Brightline running completely in Florida gets over half the ridership Amtrak gets on it's busiest corridor within its first two years of operations. Not bad, if you ask me.

That's an apples to oranges comparison, because Brightlne's number is both intercity and commuter passenger counts. Commuter agencies on the NEC account for a much higher volume of ridership than Amtrak:

• MBTA: 19 million
• MNRR: 52 million
• NJT: 46 million
• SEPTA: 15 million
• Other: 3 million

That's 135 million to go with Amtrak's 10 million. Now to be fair, not all of them are riding specifically on the NEC, maybe only a third, but that's still a number that completely dwarfs Amtrak and Brightline. How much of Brightline's ridership is fancy commuter rail vs true inter-city?

The Brightline commuters WPB-MIA are still taking a seat from the Orlando ridership, not a slot from the intercity areas. I don’t think the infancy of IRIS trips of TriRail for the “last mile” would affect those slots into Miami Central.

There was still ramping up of round trips from the last couple of months of Orlando traffic, and numbers are capturing both auto and air traffic to/from Orlando.

Bob Roberts wrote: ↑Sat Jan 27, 2024 2:18 am More ridership numbers, these are not great

The Florida high-speed rail system last month disclosed in bond documents that it anticipates carrying a combined 5.5 million passengers this year on its new long-distance service between Miami and the Orlando airport and on its five-year-old South Florida commuter line between West Palm Beach and Miami.

That’s down 21% from Brightline’s forecast of about 7 million riders in September, when the service to Orlando airport opened.

electricron wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 12:05 pm 5.5 million passengers is very good, but not as great as they hoped. Amtrak last year had slightly less than 30 million passengers, nationally. And to break that down somewhat, about a third of that 30 million, around 10 million, comes from NEC trains.
Therefore, Brightline running completely in Florida gets over half the ridership Amtrak gets on it's busiest corridor within its first two years of operations. Not bad, if you ask me.

BandA wrote: ↑Sun Jan 28, 2024 3:18 pm Pre-openning projection vs actual. Not an actual decline

One thing to also consider is how post-COVID is affecting passenger rail. A lot of commuter agencies up north are reporting they have not returned 100% to pre-COVID numbers, and likely never will. Some of them have barely recuperated 67%! Remote work, and workers being resistant to it going away, will ensure that it stays that way.
5.5 million passengers is still pretty phenomenal for private rail, but it could've been higher if COVID never happened.

Another thing to consider is money is getting tighter for many Americans - Brightline from the start seemed to market itself towards passengers who have deeper pockets, but as the economy doesn't seem to be warming up for the Average Joe, I assume a lot of potential Brightline passengers will have to forgo the train and look towards cheaper options.

FWIW, 5.5 Million customers is roughly around 15,000 passengers a day on average, meaning Brightline can likely secure $1M in revenue a day, just from ticket sales.

Another jump: WFTV.com

Brightline Orlando-to-Miami ridership jumps again in January

Brightline’s ridership between Orlando and South Florida hit a milestone in January as it continues to provide increased revenue for the intercity passenger train service — something that should help fund new stations and a route to Tampa eventually.
...
There’s also the potential for more frequent trips to be added between Miami and Orlando as the ridership continues to grow.

The Miami-based company reported 122,703 total passengers during the first month of 2024, the most recent data available, on the long-distance service to and from Orlando International Airport, up slightly from the prior month’s total of 115,683. The January long-distance ridership surpassed short-distance ridership in South Florida of 113,560 for the month, making up more than 50% of its ridership for the first time.
...

That's encouraging! I wrote down some thoughts after riding Brightline:

Brightline Impressions

Brightline trims near term ridership projections again but still expects to reach its 8 million pa full service goal per bond offering docs. As a recent rider I’ll offer that the MCO terminus is awfully isolated, and a Stuart station will certainly improve ridership.

https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/flor ... 09659.html

The forecast was trimmed by another 600,000 from Brightline’s forecast of 5.5 million in December after an updated study of ridership and revenue.

Projections for when the new rail service will be fully ramped up — 2026 for trips between Miami and Orlando — were unchanged, according to bond documents amended earlier this month.

The company expects to reach its projection of 8 million passengers in 2026, even under a more conservative forecast of 4 million riders this year, according to an offering memorandum for a $770 million bond remarketing this week..

Bob Roberts wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2024 6:50 am Brightline trims near term ridership projections again but still expects to reach its 8 million pa full service goal per bond offering docs.

Although this brief article reports that Brightline is hitting capacity limits on some long-distance city pairs and implies that they are now throttling short-distance ticket availability. Perhaps the reductions in ridership forecasts are being partially driven by equipment availability?

https://www.thenextmiami.com/brightline ... in-routes/

Amtrak is confronted with this on the LD's that run the NEC; not sure if where else. Their "commuter-distance" stretch has to be managed to allow for the "LD" riders. I wonder as well if Brightline will run "commuter-only" trains starting at WPB. I did find a schedule online: PDF which shows two early morning trains starting at WPB, and to late evening trains ending at WPB.

Perhaps this will enable some express trains?

From above Next Miami link:

Demand for our service currently exceeds supply on certain routes, with approximately one out of every three trains at or near capacity and approximately 50% of trains with 80%+ load factors in the month of February,” a note to investors said.

To meet demand, Brightline has ordered additional new passenger cars which are scheduled for delivery this summer.

In the meantime, the company has been forced to restrict capacity for short-distance trips in order to make room for more profitable long-distance passengers.

Jeff Smith wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 9:21 am Perhaps this will enable some express trains?

So this leads us to a question I have had for a while. How much track capacity does Brightline have on the FEC? Seems like Grupo México will need to run at least a couple of intermodals a day from Miami. But Brightline is talking about higher frequencies (although longer trains would also address this capacity issue), and the city of Miami just got federal funding for Adventura commuter service on the FEC. Add in a few WPB to Miami trains and you have a pretty busy double tracked railroad (from Grupo México and Dade, Browerd and West Palm Beach counties (lots of crossing gates down) perspective anyway).

Brightline short of capacity? What a nice position to be in? Not at all!! Just think how much MCO - MIA revenue is being lost. There is precedent as Amtrak is having capacity problems as well. We can be certain that BL management is trying to come up with solutions, They probably do not want to tarnish BL image by borrowing some other equipment that would need to be refurbished & would be considered sub-standard.

Are any BL trains operating just between Palm Beach and MIA?? Would tweaking the schedule to have a set be considered as a train assigned to just between those destinations? BL IMO would never borrow some equipment to add capacity to some MCO <> MIA trains.

probably best solution is to get Siemens to speed up deliveries of additional cars?

Regarding FEC freight trains was there an idea put forward to re-route these trains over the ex-CSX line that Tri rail now uses south of WPB?

west point wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 10:31 pm Brightline short of capacity? What a nice position to be in? Not at all!! Just think how much MCO - MIA revenue is being lost. There is precedent as Amtrak is having capacity problems as well. We can be certain that BL management is trying to come up with solutions, They probably do not want to tarnish BL image by borrowing some other equipment that would need to be refurbished & would be considered sub-standard.

west point wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 10:31 pm probably best solution is to get Siemens to speed up deliveries of additional cars?

Since Brightline is operating high(er) speed rail here, it is highly unlikely they would be allowed to borrowing equipment from other passenger railroads. I know I wouldn't trust some of the NJT passenger cars going 130MPH.

Bob Roberts wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2024 12:37 pm So this leads us to a question I have had for a while. How much track capacity does Brightline have on the FEC? Seems like Grupo México will need to run at least a couple of intermodals a day from Miami. But Brightline is talking about higher frequencies (although longer trains would also address this capacity issue), and the city of Miami just got federal funding for Adventura commuter service on the FEC. Add in a few WPB to Miami trains and you have a pretty busy double tracked railroad (from Grupo México and Dade, Browerd and West Palm Beach counties (lots of crossing gates down) perspective anyway).

From what it seems, it seems like Brightline starts to stop running trains by midnight, and then the trains start back up around 5AM. I'm sure this varies depending on the day, any special occasions/holidays, and which station. In any sense, there is probably at least a 2 or 3 hour window where Brightline is not operating trains, and FEC can run what they need.

In addition, the ROW Brightline and FEC uses could probably fit extra tracks, if needed. Of course, in places like Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and Stuart, you have some chokepoints.

Alex M wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2024 7:49 am Regarding FEC freight trains was there an idea put forward to re-route these trains over the ex-CSX line that Tri rail now uses south of WPB?

CSX still has trackage rights over Tri-Rails tracks. IIRC, CSX still does a lot of freight on that line, I can't imagine they would be happy to have the FEC run on their territory. I wouldn't be surprised if legally speaking, CSX is the only freight operator allowed to run on Tri-Rail's existing trackage.

My thought was for Brightline to borrow equipment to run just Palm Beach <> MIA no faster than 79 MPH..

west point wrote: ↑Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:40 pm My thought was for Brightline to borrow equipment to run just Palm Beach <> MIA no faster than 79 MPH..

There's currently only 2 trains in the AM WPB-MIA, and 2 PM outbound.