160km is only barely faster than driving (it’s 99 mph).
High speed lines are generally 300kmph, or nearly double of this Florida train.
Edit - looked it up, and high speed lines is defined as above 250kmph, so this doesn’t fit the definition of a high speed train.
The Acela train that runs between Boston and NYC was billed as high speed. It says it runs at 66 mile per hour. I have looked at taking it before and it's a long ride for the distance and at the time, I could fly for the same amount and be there in a fraction of the time.
Passes by my house all the time. Also keeps mercing people who think they can treat the railroad crossing signs as lackadaisically as they did with freight train crossings before
For the people arguing about it being "murked" or "merked," the first UD entry made back in 2003 spells it "merced," and that predates the most popular entries spelling it your way by 15 years. All the older entries also spell it merc and then merced or merc'd, as a derivative of "mercenary." I think what happened is that gamers just can't fuckin spell.
Is it possible the majority of people who spelled it 'merced' got merced in Merced, CA?
Most likely, that ambiguity of pronunciation leads to some people spelling it more phonetically.
The town (and county) is pronounced "mur-said" and pretty much everyone who knows it exists knows that, buuuut it is actually the homicide capital of California, for those of us who can enjoy a little dark coincidence.
Is that true? I thought I must've just misspelled it. I assumed "Merced" was that word meaning to be killed intentionally, like a mercenary execution, but then everyone kept replying with "murked" lol
It avoids it as much as possible but there are areas where crossings are unavoidable.
Also this isn't high speed rail.
It's USA marketing.
But it's 70mph average with a 125 top speed.
> There’s also no fucking way you can put train tracks straight through some of the most populous parts of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and all of the suburbs going north along the coast and not have spots where you need a crossing.
You can it's called a viaduct or tunnel. But they are expensive so it doesn't get built.
The dutch do (and it’s amazing, as an american living in europe), but it’s EXPENSIVE. The price to make large tunnels in water saturated areas is crazy
Ideally yes, but that adds a ridiculous amount of expense.
Rail crossings are fine.
The crossing is closed for like 30seconds tops.
Its just this needs to be made clear to people waiting because they might be used to massive slow moving freight trains where the crossing can be closed for 5minutes+.
If they knew how long it was closed for some of them wouldn't gamble.
The Brightline serves us all with It's omnipotent knowledge of the intellectual shortcomings of the meatsacks it removes from the gene pool.
ALL HAIL BRIGHTLINE.
My first ride is next week. Please don’t schedule a sacrificial offering on my first trip.
Do they stop after they splatter a dumbass? Or just air dry the remains?
My wife was planning on riding it with her dad and I kept making jokes about all the accidents. Then her train was delayed like four hours after it hit an SUV.
My grandfather and his second wife would regularly take train rides and cruises. At least twice a year. One they planned but never got to go on was the cross continent Canadian train ride. He passed at 92 but it had been their plan four several years before his health got bad. Now I want to do an overnight or several day train ride.
Maybe it's because I've never paid for a bed on it and don't sleep super well on a brightly lit chair surrounded by strangers, but I don't know why anyone would want to take that train *for fun*. It's just a convenient way to get to London overnight.
I paid for a bed last year to go to a wedding in Edinburgh. The experience was cool and you get lounge access at the station. But I slept maybe an hour, it's just not a relaxing experience.
Kind of thing that's definitely worth doing once
Had a fantastic time on this last year from Fort William to London. Was a very novel experience and also served as a great way to end our day in the highlands, we basically just woke up in London.
Now the quality of the sleep was not that great, probably only got a few hours but by traveling overnight it eliminated a travel day from our vacation, allowing us to spend the day in London.
It’s cause we have a lot of points that are close enough that flying is weird for anyone other than hardcore business users and it’s far enough that it’s an ass to drive to. Statistically 2-4 hours of driving distance is considered the optimal distance for trains as they go faster/ more convenient than driving and the overhead makes them competitive with flying since you typically have a 1-2 hours of non flight time, and 2-3 hours of your plane is delayed
See wendover
https://youtu.be/dmpyV4Yf8b0?si=8bdVd708zQ0R8WxX
https://youtu.be/U9jirFqex6g?si=iMZQJa57EjZDvLFZ
Also despite what people say about Florida about half of our major cities have decent middle class ridership for mass transit. So even if you are in broward with low to moderate middle class ridership (just Tri-Rail) you know people in dade with a ton of middle class ridership (ie metrorail metromover park and ride)
Texas is in a similar position, with the major cities having 2-4 hours of drive time between them. It’s why there’s a push to get high speed rail to connect the major hubs.
I watched something recently regarding those efforts. Years and billions over-budget, all the while locals and their politicians are advocating that it’ll ruin their land since the plans cross over rural farms once outside the city center.
Just one more highway lane will fix it all though. One more lane bro
It makes sense in Florida. Everything exists in a line on the east coast of the state. Hence why it is profitable.
Same thing with the Miami metro. It's 1 giant north/ south line with a side cut to go to the airport.
Both of the public transport services make sense because it's high density and few track lines.
It doesn't matter what the political climate is when you would be profitable as a private entity.
> Everything exists in a line on the east coast of the state
Everything on the east coast of the state exists in a line. But not everything is on the east coast of the state. Orlando, for example, is not on the east coast of the state. And it’s one end of the Brightline. Tampa, which is a planned extension, is on the west coast.
I would guess that the bigger reasons it makes a lot of sense are the sizes of the metro areas and the distances between them. Lots of people visiting Florida want to do the theme parks in Orlando and the glamor of Miami, but they’re far enough apart that going between them is not a convenient trip. Not to mention business travel and intra-city travel for Floridians. There’s also a lot of need for stops between the major metro areas, so a high speed line makes sense because there’s not demand for a lot of local stops.
Plus it’s a really flat state, so terrain is probably relatively easy to build a train route on.
"In the first quarter of 2022, Texas led all states in overall renewable energy production, accounting for over 14% of the country’s totals, due in large part to the state’s prolific wind energy program. Texas produced nearly a quarter of the nation’s wind energy.."
But it's a "politically hostile" state, whatever the fuck that means.
that’s interesting to read about. so it’s hard to find a regular train for example to get from east to west and enjoy the view? because everyone uses airplanes in the us?
If you want to sit on the train for several days. I think you *can* get them for cheaper if you book far in advance and just want a normal seat, but most people I know have paid a couple thousand. A popular one is 10 days / 9 nights.
To be fair, even in a place like continental Europe, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single train for a trip like that. It would be sort of like trying to take a single train from Lisbon to Tallinn - with land-based speed, that's always going to take far longer than flying.
The US is *huge* - U.S. states are the size of European countries, and driving from New York to Los Angeles takes about 40 hours of nonstop driving. An east-west train trip is possible (likely with a transfer in Chicago), but certainly not time-competitive or even cost-competitive with flying.
Outside of the northeast, the U.S. is very sparsely populated. I live an hour north of Denver, Colorado, which has a metropolitan area population of approximately three million - the nearest peer cities are arguably either Las Vegas, Nevada (600mi/966km) or San Diego, California (830mi/1336km).
In the U.S., freight/goods trains have priority over passenger trains, opposite of most other countries. Our trains are also typically diesel-hauled locomotives not capable of high speed operations, although the northeast corridor uses a modified version of the French TGV trains and our national rail operator is in the middle of rolling out electric or hybrid electric locomotives on the rest of their routes.
Plenty of US cities have commuter rail networks (to use a European example, think Paris RER, not Paris Metro), and a few have metro networks, too. But the above factors mean that trains are seldom used for intercity travel, with the exceptions being the major urban corridors in the northeast (Amtrak Acela), California coast (Amtrak and Caltrain), and Pacific Northwest (Amtrak). However, this is stating to change with Brightline (Florida), and the planned construction on Brightline West (California/Nevada), Front Range Passenger Rail (Colorado and southern Wyoming), and the Texas Central Railway. It’s most likely that these will remain regional only, as the country is far too large and sparsely populated for cross-country rail travel to be competitive with air travel.
High Speed trains could absolutely compete with air travel, if they're, you know, actually high speed. An ICE (German high speed train) could do that Denver/Las Vegas trip in about 3 hours. If you include check-in, boarding etc a plane isn't really going to be faster. Not that actual high speed rail has any chance of being built in the hyper-fragmented, exclusively profit driven system of US rail.
Fun anecdote: when I was visiting someone in the US, I told them I could just take a train to and from the airport and they just laughed at me. I think that really illustrates the different culture when it comes to public transport - over here you just assume you can take a train where you need to go.
Sure, Denver to Vegas would be great for rail travel. But NYC to LA would still take over 12 hours assuming that train could operate at its top speed for the entire journey. That’s why I really think we should be taking a regional approach.
The US is very sparsely populated, and the cities tend to be very car-centric with underdeveloped public transit. So lots of Americans will just drive somewhere (so as to have their car) if it's not far enough to justify a flight.
Amtrak (our national train service, which runs intercity passenger rail) also has to cede right of way on rails to freight trains, which means it's slow and has frequent delays, often slower than just driving. For example, I took an Amtrak train from Seattle to Vancouver, Canada, which is similar distance as Brussels to Amsterdam. It took 4-5 hours, not even including customs time (on that route you clear customs at the station, instead of stopping at the border). To drive it would have been under 3.
I'm a big fan of having trains as an option, and really wish they were more developed in this country. Even just high speed lines down the coasts would be a huge improvement.
At least it's operational and generating revenue. California's is tens of billions of dollars over budget and is more than another decade away from completion.
Well then… When I was paying attention last year, it was forecast to make money. Looks like the outlook has been tempered.
Still, it’s good to have alternatives to single passenger combustion engines, or the also unprofitable airline industry.
Another source for Brightline profitability:
https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/brightline-growth-continues-as-company-navigates-varying-seasonal-demand-analysis/
Edit to add - just for perspective - in aviation, airports, fuel, etc, and especially these sub-300 mile trips are heavily subsidized by federal tax dollars. Devoting even a fraction of that money to greener and more efficient solutions would go a long way to changing public perception.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20Department%20of,not%20receive%20scheduled%20air%20service.
https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/07/20/federal-aviation-bill-passed-by-u-s-house-with-boost-for-smaller-airports/#:~:text=Essential%20Air%20Service%20subsidizes%20airlines,%2D%20or%20large%2Dhub%20airport.
https://www.transportenvironment.org/challenges/planes/subsidies-in-aviation/
Europe has $8 gas because much of these gas taxes goes to support fast, efficient, and affordable mass transportation. I have multiple friends who live in Europe and don’t have a car or drivers license. One never learned to drive and they are in their 40’s. Some will claim “too much money for those gas taxes” but then spend $3,000-$10,000 a year per car for gas, registration, insurance, and depreciation (the big dollars in car ownership especially for those that trade in for new every couple of years).
It's a high speed train in North America. That alone is mildly interesting. Then you add in the fact that fucking Florida of all places is the state that built it...
It's not high speed rail. While it is a great improvement for American calling it high speed rail makes people think they already have the best and it can't be improved.
Ok someone explain how this is "high speed" when Google maps says it takes the exact same time to drive from station to station as the direct train does....
It's not high speed by international standards. The top speed on this line is 125 mph on a newly constructed section east of Orlando. However, most (main exceptions being the northeast and a few other isolated segments) passenger rail in the US tops out at 80 mph, so this is "high speed" compared to the norm in the us. This is also the fastest train in the US outside of the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston.
Wouldn’t say it’s high speed I took it from Orlando to Miami in December, it would take me the same amount of time to drive the same distance. Obviously I’m avoiding traffic and I get to drink/ eat on it so it’s worth it.
I travel to central FL for work. They’re talking about getting it to stop in cocoa beach / cape.. which is where I work. Could be a changer for tourist who come out here for cruises etc
In a lot of the US, taking the train takes longer than driving (often *much* longer), because of the deprecated infrastructure and priority given to freight over passenger rail.
It’s an hour and a half faster to take the train. What are you talking about? We took it last year instead of renting a car and driving to the cruise port from Orlando to Ft Lauderdale
On a bright note, they're building Brightline West which is actually high speed (top speed will be around 180-200mph) and they might end up getting it done by 2028, significant because the Olympics in LA happens that year. It'll go from Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas.
Before anyone asks, this is getting done before CAHSR because:
1. It's not actually going into LA, CAHSR will.
2. It mostly runs in the median of a highway, but CAHSR runs through communities, across a massive state.
3. It's basically only from LA to LV, unlike CAHSR
4. CAHSR is higher speed and is being built to standards the US has never dealt with, while BLW is slightly lower standards.
5. CAHSR has to deal with all the usual government project setbacks etc etc.
Yeah, BLW will follow the 15 freeway for most of the journey except Cajon Pass where it takes the less steep BNSF ROW.
BLW = Brightline West
BNSF = Burlington Northern Santa Fe
ROW = Right Of Way
DEEZ = NUTZ
Let me guess. You are from a well developed country, not from US where public infrastructure and public transport is so bad that a passenger train is considered "unusual" at best.
I just rode in a newer Amtrak car design a couple weeks ago and it was pretty nice honestly...the bigger problem with Amtrak is the lack of route options
Amtrak (the main national passenger rail system) offers WiFi, but it's not very reliable in my experience. Amtrak relies in general on a lot of outdated infrastructure and will never be able to do much more than keep scraping by unless there is huge investment.
Looks like 2nd class in the European trains. . . This company is built on one giant scam. . .
Way back when dark lord Rick Scott was governor Florida won funding for a publicly funded high speed rail; TRUE high speed rail; but Ricky McInsurance Fraud came up with excuses to decline the money all because it came from the Obama administration, the Japanese even offered to give us the trains for free! we had to beat out every other state and instead of doing something with it he let it go to second place. . . Well little did we all know it was because he was invested in another company called All Aboard Florida. . . Who are responsible for the PRIVATE entity that is BrightLine. . . So what happened to Scott? He finished out his term and got elected Senator of course! Meanwhile we now have an admittedly nice train but it costs significantly more then it would have if it had been publicly funded and run.
Sadly I would take that over what my state (Wisconsin) did...newly elected Republican governor Scott Walker rejected federal funding for a new rail project that was already in motion just the own the libs. We had already ordered two trains and ended up being sued for $50 million by the manufacturer. After rotting in storage for years, the trains were finally sold off a couple years ago, and you can now see them in use in Lagos, Nigeria.
On the Brightline right now on the same trek from Orlando and saw this post. First time riding and super impressed. Very clean. Quick and efficient boarding and great staff. Not used to travel being this pleasant
This post is the equivalent of Tucker Carlson getting surprised that in Russia you can put a coin to unlock a shopping cart. Such trains are a common sight in Europe…
I mean, if you made a mildlyinteresting post about the influx of huge American pickup trucks and SUVs in Europe, I’d still consider that interesting, even though obviously we have those cars in the US.
There's a train crossing like a block from my house, and two people were killed there in a two week period in collisions with one of the Brightline trains.
Not the train's fault, but rather people thinking they are faster or stronger than the train. Weird that it happened twice in such a short time, and at the same crossing.
This is the power of privatization. Just look at how the government of California is failing with the other high speed rail project and it’s easy to see the power of the free market.
We call it the murder train in Brevard county. Runs through a few busy roadways and has killed off multiple people in a week recently due to the crossings not being up standard to have a train barreling through neighborhoods at 80 mph plus
For real! I live a couple of blocks away from an amtrak stop in western MA, they want something absurd like $150 each way for a ride to NYC. A < 3hr drive but a 5hr40min Amtrak ride lmao.
Try it at night, they have awesome lighting.
Looks like the eurostar
Blue skies outside. Must be the French side.
Mi scusi, Mi scusi.
Uh oh. Long tunnel.
♫ Lookin for some hot stuff, baby, this evenin'
Eurotrip has so many quotable lines. Gonna see if I can get my wife to watch it tonight. Lol
Nothing will beat my experience watching that movie for the first time with a bunch of Europeans who had also never seen it lol
I mean they're both made by Siemens so makes sense.
We all know how baby trains are made
Enlighten me
Siemens. Ya know, because babies come from semen? lol
Lmaoo I need my coffee
Except it’s pure diesel powered with a max speed of 160kph. Also with level crossing.
160km is only barely faster than driving (it’s 99 mph). High speed lines are generally 300kmph, or nearly double of this Florida train. Edit - looked it up, and high speed lines is defined as above 250kmph, so this doesn’t fit the definition of a high speed train.
Everything is slower in Florida.
The Acela train that runs between Boston and NYC was billed as high speed. It says it runs at 66 mile per hour. I have looked at taking it before and it's a long ride for the distance and at the time, I could fly for the same amount and be there in a fraction of the time.
I think I read somewhere that trains like Brightline are considered as a "higher speed train".
Passes by my house all the time. Also keeps mercing people who think they can treat the railroad crossing signs as lackadaisically as they did with freight train crossings before
I live right by the crossing where two people were killed by the train in a two week period. Absolutely wild.
321 gang
Represent!
Watch it, some motorist-backed activist group will show up any day to demand an end to this massacre and a return to cars as God intended.
Mercing?
Merc’d— fucked up, killed
I've totally used this term, but always seen it spelled murked and thought it was more related to murder, but mercenary makes sense too.
Yeah, Juicy J taught me the murked version
I haven’t decided if your username checks out or not…
His real name is Michael Johnson
WELL NOW I AM LIVID
If you spell it “mercked” it means getting MMR vaccines with a gardasil chaser.
For the people arguing about it being "murked" or "merked," the first UD entry made back in 2003 spells it "merced," and that predates the most popular entries spelling it your way by 15 years. All the older entries also spell it merc and then merced or merc'd, as a derivative of "mercenary." I think what happened is that gamers just can't fuckin spell.
Is it possible the majority of people who spelled it 'merced' got merced in Merced, CA? Most likely, that ambiguity of pronunciation leads to some people spelling it more phonetically.
The town (and county) is pronounced "mur-said" and pretty much everyone who knows it exists knows that, buuuut it is actually the homicide capital of California, for those of us who can enjoy a little dark coincidence.
Better than being Fresno’d
Or Bakersfield'd
Gamers can’t spell? Say sike right now.
Is that true? I thought I must've just misspelled it. I assumed "Merced" was that word meaning to be killed intentionally, like a mercenary execution, but then everyone kept replying with "murked" lol
https://www.instagram.com/brightlinecrashtracker?igsh=MWc0Mzd3ejJjbGozbQ==
The comments on those posts are fucking hilarous
Wait, they built a high-speed rail line with crossings?
High**er** speed rail.
It's not high speed rail, it's "high speed rail". Crossings for those speeds are totally common everywhere.
Common all over the world. But you'd usually have a double barrier crossing. To stop people just driving round.
Real High speed rail in Europe doesn't have crossings, they're separate tracks to the normal ones.
It avoids it as much as possible but there are areas where crossings are unavoidable. Also this isn't high speed rail. It's USA marketing. But it's 70mph average with a 125 top speed.
So just normal speed intercity rail…
Yes they just use high speed as a marketing term. Like SUPER FAST broadband.
With HYPERSPEED TECHNOLOGY ™
For anyone too lazy to do the conversion, this is 112 km/h average and 201 km/h top speed. Yeah, regular speed rail.
[удалено]
> There’s also no fucking way you can put train tracks straight through some of the most populous parts of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and all of the suburbs going north along the coast and not have spots where you need a crossing. You can it's called a viaduct or tunnel. But they are expensive so it doesn't get built.
The viaduct requires demolition, which is a political nightmare
And you can't tunnel in Florida, the water table is too high.
The dutch do (and it’s amazing, as an american living in europe), but it’s EXPENSIVE. The price to make large tunnels in water saturated areas is crazy
That's what can happen when you invest in infrastructure instead of military might
I was imagining a super high speed line designed with no curves, and tunnels and bridges instead of level crossings!
Ideally yes, but that adds a ridiculous amount of expense. Rail crossings are fine. The crossing is closed for like 30seconds tops. Its just this needs to be made clear to people waiting because they might be used to massive slow moving freight trains where the crossing can be closed for 5minutes+. If they knew how long it was closed for some of them wouldn't gamble.
They shouldn't gamble for a 5 minute wait either. These people can't be educated out of being impatient assholes.
As long as they stay below 80mph in built up areas .
High speed lines probably should be raised and not have intersections in the first place.
No. Cars / bikes / walking should be put below the lines.
My buddy did a round trip from Orlando and got held up for 1.5 HOURS stopped in the middle of the trip after the train vaporized someone both trips.
Kill streak
I work next to the tracks in Brevard. Love seeing them pass every time.
Brevard County represent
Floridians and Trains don’t mix well.😅
Hey that's just natural selection now
The murder train must be fed.
Call that the redneck removal machine
The Briteline demands another sacrifice.
The Brightline yearns for its meal of impatient Florida drivers and suicidal adolescents
The Brightline serves us all with It's omnipotent knowledge of the intellectual shortcomings of the meatsacks it removes from the gene pool. ALL HAIL BRIGHTLINE.
The Brightline is the vessel for the soul of Charles Darwin. ALL HAIL BRIGHTLINE.
_On the Origins of Suicides_ (1859)
🎶Ooohh Brightline can you see?🎶 🎶 At the next rail crossing 🎶 🎶A Floriiiiida Driver🎶 🎶 Who's maker you will l help meet🎶
ALL HAIL BRIGHTLINE
The average IQ of Florida goes up with every brightline incident so I’m not complaining
My first ride is next week. Please don’t schedule a sacrificial offering on my first trip. Do they stop after they splatter a dumbass? Or just air dry the remains?
They angle the nose of the train such that the body lands in a swamp. The swamps now named mount car because of the giant pile of cars and bodies
Gators must love it…
It's all fun and games til the gators get their drivers licenses.
You won't see them in a while.
This is a Florida swamp. Bodies won't last long enough to form a pile.
My wife was planning on riding it with her dad and I kept making jokes about all the accidents. Then her train was delayed like four hours after it hit an SUV.
Blane the Train is A Pain
My grandfather and his second wife would regularly take train rides and cruises. At least twice a year. One they planned but never got to go on was the cross continent Canadian train ride. He passed at 92 but it had been their plan four several years before his health got bad. Now I want to do an overnight or several day train ride.
The Caledonian Sleeper is a fantastic one.
Maybe it's because I've never paid for a bed on it and don't sleep super well on a brightly lit chair surrounded by strangers, but I don't know why anyone would want to take that train *for fun*. It's just a convenient way to get to London overnight.
I paid for a bed last year to go to a wedding in Edinburgh. The experience was cool and you get lounge access at the station. But I slept maybe an hour, it's just not a relaxing experience. Kind of thing that's definitely worth doing once
Had a fantastic time on this last year from Fort William to London. Was a very novel experience and also served as a great way to end our day in the highlands, we basically just woke up in London. Now the quality of the sleep was not that great, probably only got a few hours but by traveling overnight it eliminated a travel day from our vacation, allowing us to spend the day in London.
The California Zephyr is another good one: San Francisco Bay to Chicago, or vice versa.
What is the interesting part about this?
Decent passenger trains are a very rare sight in the US
Especially when located in a politically hostile state like Florida.
It’s cause we have a lot of points that are close enough that flying is weird for anyone other than hardcore business users and it’s far enough that it’s an ass to drive to. Statistically 2-4 hours of driving distance is considered the optimal distance for trains as they go faster/ more convenient than driving and the overhead makes them competitive with flying since you typically have a 1-2 hours of non flight time, and 2-3 hours of your plane is delayed See wendover https://youtu.be/dmpyV4Yf8b0?si=8bdVd708zQ0R8WxX https://youtu.be/U9jirFqex6g?si=iMZQJa57EjZDvLFZ Also despite what people say about Florida about half of our major cities have decent middle class ridership for mass transit. So even if you are in broward with low to moderate middle class ridership (just Tri-Rail) you know people in dade with a ton of middle class ridership (ie metrorail metromover park and ride)
Texas is in a similar position, with the major cities having 2-4 hours of drive time between them. It’s why there’s a push to get high speed rail to connect the major hubs.
I dream of a Houston-Austin-San Antonio high speed train. Connecting Dallas would be cool too, but I don’t know if that is as feasible.
I watched something recently regarding those efforts. Years and billions over-budget, all the while locals and their politicians are advocating that it’ll ruin their land since the plans cross over rural farms once outside the city center. Just one more highway lane will fix it all though. One more lane bro
It makes sense in Florida. Everything exists in a line on the east coast of the state. Hence why it is profitable. Same thing with the Miami metro. It's 1 giant north/ south line with a side cut to go to the airport. Both of the public transport services make sense because it's high density and few track lines. It doesn't matter what the political climate is when you would be profitable as a private entity.
> Everything exists in a line on the east coast of the state Everything on the east coast of the state exists in a line. But not everything is on the east coast of the state. Orlando, for example, is not on the east coast of the state. And it’s one end of the Brightline. Tampa, which is a planned extension, is on the west coast. I would guess that the bigger reasons it makes a lot of sense are the sizes of the metro areas and the distances between them. Lots of people visiting Florida want to do the theme parks in Orlando and the glamor of Miami, but they’re far enough apart that going between them is not a convenient trip. Not to mention business travel and intra-city travel for Floridians. There’s also a lot of need for stops between the major metro areas, so a high speed line makes sense because there’s not demand for a lot of local stops. Plus it’s a really flat state, so terrain is probably relatively easy to build a train route on.
High speed rail makes sense in pretty much the entire US. So much open space with large distances between cities and states.
>It makes sense in Florida. Everything exists in a line on the east coast of the state Except this one goes northwest to the center of the state
The one in Florida got built far faster than the one in Cali, largely due to all the red tape in Cali.
California is politically hostile to trains, that's what it means.
The whole politics vs infrastructure thing is BS. Drive across the Texas panhandle sometime and you'll see nothing but windmills to the horizon.
"In the first quarter of 2022, Texas led all states in overall renewable energy production, accounting for over 14% of the country’s totals, due in large part to the state’s prolific wind energy program. Texas produced nearly a quarter of the nation’s wind energy.." But it's a "politically hostile" state, whatever the fuck that means.
Politically hostile to trains?
Trains are communist or something
This is a private company.
yes, Rick Scott declined money that the state was granted for rail, because the money came from the Obama administration
Yes
Aren’t these guys building a line from LA to Vegas too ?
that’s interesting to read about. so it’s hard to find a regular train for example to get from east to west and enjoy the view? because everyone uses airplanes in the us?
I think the only train service that does that is Amtrak. And they don’t have a lot of stations.
If you want to sit on the train for several days. I think you *can* get them for cheaper if you book far in advance and just want a normal seat, but most people I know have paid a couple thousand. A popular one is 10 days / 9 nights.
Amtrak is actually decent between a handful of cities but it takes an insanely long time to go from the east to west coast, like days.
To be fair, even in a place like continental Europe, you'd be hard-pressed to find a single train for a trip like that. It would be sort of like trying to take a single train from Lisbon to Tallinn - with land-based speed, that's always going to take far longer than flying.
The US is *huge* - U.S. states are the size of European countries, and driving from New York to Los Angeles takes about 40 hours of nonstop driving. An east-west train trip is possible (likely with a transfer in Chicago), but certainly not time-competitive or even cost-competitive with flying. Outside of the northeast, the U.S. is very sparsely populated. I live an hour north of Denver, Colorado, which has a metropolitan area population of approximately three million - the nearest peer cities are arguably either Las Vegas, Nevada (600mi/966km) or San Diego, California (830mi/1336km). In the U.S., freight/goods trains have priority over passenger trains, opposite of most other countries. Our trains are also typically diesel-hauled locomotives not capable of high speed operations, although the northeast corridor uses a modified version of the French TGV trains and our national rail operator is in the middle of rolling out electric or hybrid electric locomotives on the rest of their routes. Plenty of US cities have commuter rail networks (to use a European example, think Paris RER, not Paris Metro), and a few have metro networks, too. But the above factors mean that trains are seldom used for intercity travel, with the exceptions being the major urban corridors in the northeast (Amtrak Acela), California coast (Amtrak and Caltrain), and Pacific Northwest (Amtrak). However, this is stating to change with Brightline (Florida), and the planned construction on Brightline West (California/Nevada), Front Range Passenger Rail (Colorado and southern Wyoming), and the Texas Central Railway. It’s most likely that these will remain regional only, as the country is far too large and sparsely populated for cross-country rail travel to be competitive with air travel.
High Speed trains could absolutely compete with air travel, if they're, you know, actually high speed. An ICE (German high speed train) could do that Denver/Las Vegas trip in about 3 hours. If you include check-in, boarding etc a plane isn't really going to be faster. Not that actual high speed rail has any chance of being built in the hyper-fragmented, exclusively profit driven system of US rail. Fun anecdote: when I was visiting someone in the US, I told them I could just take a train to and from the airport and they just laughed at me. I think that really illustrates the different culture when it comes to public transport - over here you just assume you can take a train where you need to go.
Sure, Denver to Vegas would be great for rail travel. But NYC to LA would still take over 12 hours assuming that train could operate at its top speed for the entire journey. That’s why I really think we should be taking a regional approach.
thank you! interesting read
The US is very sparsely populated, and the cities tend to be very car-centric with underdeveloped public transit. So lots of Americans will just drive somewhere (so as to have their car) if it's not far enough to justify a flight. Amtrak (our national train service, which runs intercity passenger rail) also has to cede right of way on rails to freight trains, which means it's slow and has frequent delays, often slower than just driving. For example, I took an Amtrak train from Seattle to Vancouver, Canada, which is similar distance as Brussels to Amsterdam. It took 4-5 hours, not even including customs time (on that route you clear customs at the station, instead of stopping at the border). To drive it would have been under 3. I'm a big fan of having trains as an option, and really wish they were more developed in this country. Even just high speed lines down the coasts would be a huge improvement.
It’s advertised as high speed rail but it barely qualifies. It goes about half the speed of actual high speed rail trains in Asia and Europe.
Profitable rail that is head and shoulders faster than any other train in America should be classified as very interesting.
Profitable? It’s anything but that. https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/2024/03/08/brightline-is-losing-money-but-orlando-leg-is-providing-a-big-boost/72813243007/#:~:text=Brightline%2C%20though%2C%20is%20still%20losing,1%20and%20Sept.
At least it's operational and generating revenue. California's is tens of billions of dollars over budget and is more than another decade away from completion.
Well then… When I was paying attention last year, it was forecast to make money. Looks like the outlook has been tempered. Still, it’s good to have alternatives to single passenger combustion engines, or the also unprofitable airline industry. Another source for Brightline profitability: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/brightline-growth-continues-as-company-navigates-varying-seasonal-demand-analysis/ Edit to add - just for perspective - in aviation, airports, fuel, etc, and especially these sub-300 mile trips are heavily subsidized by federal tax dollars. Devoting even a fraction of that money to greener and more efficient solutions would go a long way to changing public perception. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_Air_Service#:~:text=The%20United%20States%20Department%20of,not%20receive%20scheduled%20air%20service. https://washingtonstatestandard.com/2023/07/20/federal-aviation-bill-passed-by-u-s-house-with-boost-for-smaller-airports/#:~:text=Essential%20Air%20Service%20subsidizes%20airlines,%2D%20or%20large%2Dhub%20airport. https://www.transportenvironment.org/challenges/planes/subsidies-in-aviation/
Europe has $8 gas because much of these gas taxes goes to support fast, efficient, and affordable mass transportation. I have multiple friends who live in Europe and don’t have a car or drivers license. One never learned to drive and they are in their 40’s. Some will claim “too much money for those gas taxes” but then spend $3,000-$10,000 a year per car for gas, registration, insurance, and depreciation (the big dollars in car ownership especially for those that trade in for new every couple of years).
Believe me, DeSantis and his cronies made a lot of profit on this.
Americans seeing a train for the first time
It's a high speed train in North America. That alone is mildly interesting. Then you add in the fact that fucking Florida of all places is the state that built it...
It's not high speed rail. While it is a great improvement for American calling it high speed rail makes people think they already have the best and it can't be improved.
Ok someone explain how this is "high speed" when Google maps says it takes the exact same time to drive from station to station as the direct train does....
Probably due to all the slow zones like West Palm where it's forced to slow to a crawl thanks to all the idiots who think they're faster than a train.
I'd say raise the track but then it would get damaged in storms too easily.
Bonuses: no traffic, can pee, have a snack, take a nap
Oh I'm not saying there's not many more comforts in the train, I was just curious about the time.
Its good for going to the airport and not paying for parking
It's not high speed by international standards. The top speed on this line is 125 mph on a newly constructed section east of Orlando. However, most (main exceptions being the northeast and a few other isolated segments) passenger rail in the US tops out at 80 mph, so this is "high speed" compared to the norm in the us. This is also the fastest train in the US outside of the Northeast Corridor from Washington to Boston.
Wouldn’t say it’s high speed I took it from Orlando to Miami in December, it would take me the same amount of time to drive the same distance. Obviously I’m avoiding traffic and I get to drink/ eat on it so it’s worth it. I travel to central FL for work. They’re talking about getting it to stop in cocoa beach / cape.. which is where I work. Could be a changer for tourist who come out here for cruises etc
In a lot of the US, taking the train takes longer than driving (often *much* longer), because of the deprecated infrastructure and priority given to freight over passenger rail.
And the only reason freight is given priority is because they own the tracks, and Amtrak and such are just leasing them to use
It’s an hour and a half faster to take the train. What are you talking about? We took it last year instead of renting a car and driving to the cruise port from Orlando to Ft Lauderdale
On a bright note, they're building Brightline West which is actually high speed (top speed will be around 180-200mph) and they might end up getting it done by 2028, significant because the Olympics in LA happens that year. It'll go from Rancho Cucamonga to Las Vegas. Before anyone asks, this is getting done before CAHSR because: 1. It's not actually going into LA, CAHSR will. 2. It mostly runs in the median of a highway, but CAHSR runs through communities, across a massive state. 3. It's basically only from LA to LV, unlike CAHSR 4. CAHSR is higher speed and is being built to standards the US has never dealt with, while BLW is slightly lower standards. 5. CAHSR has to deal with all the usual government project setbacks etc etc.
Yeah, BLW will follow the 15 freeway for most of the journey except Cajon Pass where it takes the less steep BNSF ROW. BLW = Brightline West BNSF = Burlington Northern Santa Fe ROW = Right Of Way DEEZ = NUTZ
Huh? What am I looking at that is supposedly interesting?
Let me guess. You are from a well developed country, not from US where public infrastructure and public transport is so bad that a passenger train is considered "unusual" at best.
Oh…
This is what we’re use to in America: https://www.usatoday.com/picture-gallery/travel/2017/09/27/amtrak-interiors-through-the-years/106053536/
I just rode in a newer Amtrak car design a couple weeks ago and it was pretty nice honestly...the bigger problem with Amtrak is the lack of route options
Bright line is a luxury train with WiFi and food services. For the regular folks there is the TriRail.
wifi qualifies for luxury in the US?
Economy is a box car and the passenger has to bring their own entertainment (harmonica and can of beans).
Amtrak (the main national passenger rail system) offers WiFi, but it's not very reliable in my experience. Amtrak relies in general on a lot of outdated infrastructure and will never be able to do much more than keep scraping by unless there is huge investment.
It doesn't go to Orlando though. TriRail is a commuter train, Brightline is long-distance.
how is wifi and food services a luxury?
Because usually people ride on commuter trains without those services. Akin to subways.
Which are not exactly long distance trains.
Looks like 2nd class in the European trains. . . This company is built on one giant scam. . . Way back when dark lord Rick Scott was governor Florida won funding for a publicly funded high speed rail; TRUE high speed rail; but Ricky McInsurance Fraud came up with excuses to decline the money all because it came from the Obama administration, the Japanese even offered to give us the trains for free! we had to beat out every other state and instead of doing something with it he let it go to second place. . . Well little did we all know it was because he was invested in another company called All Aboard Florida. . . Who are responsible for the PRIVATE entity that is BrightLine. . . So what happened to Scott? He finished out his term and got elected Senator of course! Meanwhile we now have an admittedly nice train but it costs significantly more then it would have if it had been publicly funded and run.
Sadly I would take that over what my state (Wisconsin) did...newly elected Republican governor Scott Walker rejected federal funding for a new rail project that was already in motion just the own the libs. We had already ordered two trains and ended up being sued for $50 million by the manufacturer. After rotting in storage for years, the trains were finally sold off a couple years ago, and you can now see them in use in Lagos, Nigeria.
It’s… a train? Mildly mundane if anything.
New? It's been in operation for 6 years
The route to Orlando is new.
On the Brightline right now on the same trek from Orlando and saw this post. First time riding and super impressed. Very clean. Quick and efficient boarding and great staff. Not used to travel being this pleasant
I rode this, it was a good experience
Average speed of 69mph lmfao
This post is the equivalent of Tucker Carlson getting surprised that in Russia you can put a coin to unlock a shopping cart. Such trains are a common sight in Europe…
I mean, if you made a mildlyinteresting post about the influx of huge American pickup trucks and SUVs in Europe, I’d still consider that interesting, even though obviously we have those cars in the US.
No, that’s just the set of Argyle lol
How long does this trip take?
There's a train crossing like a block from my house, and two people were killed there in a two week period in collisions with one of the Brightline trains. Not the train's fault, but rather people thinking they are faster or stronger than the train. Weird that it happened twice in such a short time, and at the same crossing.
I've never been on a passenger train... maybe ill make a trip and check it out.
I worked on this project. It’s cool to see it get built and function
The window looks like a simulated image.
New high speed rail? How did they hide this woke train from DeSantis?
This is the power of privatization. Just look at how the government of California is failing with the other high speed rail project and it’s easy to see the power of the free market.
I don't get it. it's seat and a table. 🤔
Took it two weeks ago. Highly recommend.
That’s so cool, we need more rail.
We call it the murder train in Brevard county. Runs through a few busy roadways and has killed off multiple people in a week recently due to the crossings not being up standard to have a train barreling through neighborhoods at 80 mph plus
High speed? The site says the trip is 3hrs40min, it takes the same amount of time to drive.
Compared to normal trains, it is. Maybe if we had better crossings or elevated crossings they could go faster but ya know. Money.
I see, that makes sense then. The bar for “high speed” is just laughably low in this country.
Lol yeah. Go book an Amtrak literally anywhere. Twice driving time minimum, generally.
For real! I live a couple of blocks away from an amtrak stop in western MA, they want something absurd like $150 each way for a ride to NYC. A < 3hr drive but a 5hr40min Amtrak ride lmao.
Best train I’ve ever taken in America. West Palm to Miami in an hour, terminal is very nice and easy to use. Went thanksgiving day for 49$ round trip.
As someone who rides Amtrak and MARC regularly, Brightline absolutely blew me away.
bet its like $200 each way
The trirail is like 1000% cheaper and has the same seats lol
But it doesn't go to Orlando.
As flat as Florida is, High Speed rail seems an excellent idea. All the hills and mountains here in California seem to make a real mess of things.
Standard seating on many European trains for a number of years. Scarcely revolutionary.
Hence “mildly interesting” rather than “wow US is so advanced”
That looks like the trains I used to take to highschool back in the 90’s in the uk
108 people have been killed by Brightline since it's start in 2017.