Brightline Eyes Future Disney Station

MIAMI, FL — Florida's higher speed Brightline train, which is already operating from Miami to Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, appears to be planning a future station called "Disney," according to documents filed with the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission.

The company, which will soon begin calling itself Virgin Trains USA, included a map in its 2019 draft prospectus that shows the future planned Disney stop as well as another future station in Tampa.

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Ben Porritt, Brightline's senior vice president for corporate affairs, told Patch on Friday that company officials are not permitted to discuss the SEC filing due to federal security laws.

The map shows existing stations in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach as well as the planned extension from the line's northernmost point in West Palm Beach along the Florida coast to Cocoa Beach before turning inland to a planned fourth station at Orlando International Airport.

"When our Florida passenger rail system is fully built out and operational between Miami and Orlando, we expect to carry approximately 6.6 million passengers annually, as estimated by Louis Berger," the draft prospectus states, referring to an engineering, architecture and planning firm retained by Brightline.

"Louis Berger estimates that a fully built out and operational service between Orlando and Tampa would carry an additional 2.9 million passengers annually, which would result in fully operational annual stabilized ridership of approximately 9.5 million passengers for our Florida passenger rail system," the document noted.

Company officials said in the prospectus that the future Tampa expansion is contingent on the company's ability to "obtain certain land rights, which requires that we demonstrate the financial wherewithal to complete our Florida passenger rail system."

The company estimates that the combined Miami, Orlando and Tampa service would generate approximately $810 million in total revenue during the first "stabilized year," after an initial ramp up period.

"Our express transit service is significantly faster than car travel. For example, our Miami to Orlando service will take approximately 3 hours 15 minutes compared to an estimate of approximately 4 hours 15 minutes by car along I-95 or 3 hours 50 minutes along the Florida Turnpike, which is a toll road," the draft prospectus states.

Moreover, company officials anticipate that fares between Miami and Orlando will be less than the cost of driving or flying per person.

"Based on our expected fares for an individual traveler, we expect that a trip on our trains between Miami and Orlando will be approximately 25 percent less expensive than driving and approximately 30 percent less expensive than flying," officials said in the draft prospectus.

In calculating the estimate, company officials said they applied a combined annual fare growth and inflation rate of approximately 2.8 percent to Louis Berger’s estimates, thereby projecting annualized ticket revenue of approximately $697 million by the fourth quarter of 2023 or the first quarter of 2024.

The train can reach speeds of 79-miles-per-hour between Miami and West Palm but will reach speeds of up to 125-miles-per-hour once the next stop at Orlando International Airport is added in the future. The fastest speed will be on the stretch between Cocoa and Orlando International where Brightline plans to construct 40 miles of new grade separated track.

While the expansion of the only privately funded inter-city train service in the United States clearly ushers in a new era of transportation for car-dependent South Florida, it also brings with it new challenges from a safety perspective, particularly in South Florida where there have been a number of pedestrian and vehicle strikes.

"There's so many intersections down here. It's just an easy way for a train to hit a car or a pedestrian because the pedestrians can just come in and out," asserted former Amtrak conductor Mike Callanan in an earlier interview with Patch as Brightline was in the process of ushering in its Miami service in 2018. "There's really no control over the property."

Image courtesy U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission