by CentralValleyRail
Fares are $3 and $5 for Coach and Business opening weekend, I happen to be in Miami next weekend and will be riding!
Railroad Forums
Moderator: CRail
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To paraphrase Brightline, "No crossing-maintenance money for you, Treasure Coast!"
Oh, the pettiness.
Frankly, we expected better from a rail company planning to run 32 daily passenger trains through our region.
Given the fact Brightline has no plans to stop its trains anywhere on the Treasure Coast — hence, we will get all of the attendant problems but none of the benefits — you'd think Brightline would, at the very least, treat us the same way it treats other counties along the rail line.
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Brightline is drawing a distinction between counties that have sued it and those that have not. In a letter to U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, chair of the House Subcommittee on Government Operations, an attorney for Brightline, stated: "As an accommodation, with respect to certain counties that have not opposed the Brightline project, Brightline has agreed to absorb the crossing maintenance cost for a specified number of years. We have not agreed to such accommodation with respect to counties who continue to sue us ..."
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..The clock is ticking for Brightline to sell $1.15 billion of tax-exempt bonds for Phase 2 of its passenger railroad, but there's no evidence of a sale in sight.I'd like to see some reporting from Jennifer Sorentrue with Cox's Palm Beach Post on this development. Floating an issue of "junk" bonds to build out to Orlando will, as I noted earlier, will make such a mite bit more costly that I suspect they anticipated.
Brightline has until May 31 to sell the private-activity bonds, according to a deadline set by the U.S. Department of Transportation when it approved the bonds Dec..
Gilbert B Norman wrote:LOOK, LOOK, LOOK!!!What a concept! Mostly positive coverage too.
https://www.today.com/video/are-private ... 1796291642" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Bonevalleyrailfan wrote:With Softbank now owning AAF, I am sure there are some options now available to finance it that were not around a year or so ago.This is an excellent point. Although technically Softbank owns Fortress, which in turn owns AAF, they still have the deepest of deep pockets. They've just raised $100 billion for their latest venture investment fund.
jtbell wrote:Yay! They actually announced the opening far enough in advance for me to plan a trip down. Now I have to check with my "social secretary" to make sure "we" have nothing else planned for the next couple of weeks, so I can take another leisurely drive down from SC.I was all set to pull the trigger just now on a motel reservation in Fort Lauderdale this weekend. Then I looked at the weather forecasts on the Herald and Sun-Sentinel websites. Ugh. Rain, wind, thunderstorms, even possible flooding in some areas of South Florida. Not good for outdoor activities like railfanning.
People looking to sample Brightline’s higher-speed passenger trains at deep discount prices, this weekend, may be out of luck soon.
Tickets are going fast.
Brightline officials say the $3 and $5 fares offered only for this Saturday’s and Sunday’s rides are almost sold out for every train between West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
The discount tickets were priced to celebrate the May 19 start of regular passenger service to MiamiCentral station, located at 600 NW 1st Ave.
The discount prices are good system-wide, but the seating is assigned. If you miss your train, your ticket won’t be good on the next train.
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StatusWhether private equity placement or IPO, who will subscribe to that? Last time a passenger rail company had an IPO was Auto-Train Corp. - and we all know how that turned out.
Financing 40% equity/60% debt
• Expected close August-Sept 2018
• Allows notice to proceed (NTP) late summer/fall 2018
• Completion about same time as South Terminal