Brightline Ridership and Revenue

Up: The Next Miami

Brightline Ridership Up 78% In First Half Of 2023
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Through the first six months of 2023, there were a total of 956,120 passengers who rode Brightline – up 78% from the same period in 2022 when there were 538,140 passengers.

Revenue for the company is rising even faster, up 129% in the first half of 2023 to $30.2m (compared to $13.2m in the first six months of 2022).

A Brightline forecast in 2017 had projected 2.9 million passengers on the Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach route, but an analysis by a bond rating firm had projected the service could still be profitable with much fewer passengers.
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I note that the last time we had a discussion about ridership vs forecast (that comes in site search) it was 2019, when GIlbert Norman supplied us wit these 5-month numbers.

-----------2019-----2018---%TGE
JAN-------73568----17783--313.7%
FEB-------78707----24098--226.6%
MAR-------91903----32899--179.4%
APR-------71308----23320--205.8%
MAY-------85740----34100--151.4%
TOTAL----401226---132200--203.5%

So basically, you could say that 2022 is when Brightline got back to a Pre-Covid half-million-ish pace (per half)
And 2023 is now up 78% from that.

And I'll repeat my sense from back then: it isn't that Brighline is below forecasts, its that it is behind schedule. Seems they will grow to the kind of volumes that they promised investors, its just that it is taking longer than expected--partly due to a slow start and partly due to Covid-- to lure riders.

Brightline is pulling crazy numbers now, even without Orlando yet. Brightline may have been closed all throughout COVID, but Florida only grew in population - especially South Florida. People didn't want to deal with the traffic on I-95, so many people flocked to Brightline

Here's a post-MCO Orlando update: Next Miami

Very brief article, so these are just snips to comply with fair-use.

Here’s How Many Passengers Are Riding Brightline’s New Train Service To Orlando

In October, the company reported a total of 79,686 long-distance riders using the Orlando station.
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Overall, Brightline carried carried 205,745 passengers in October (including local and long-distance), double the passenger count of October 2022. Revenue surged 390%, thanks partly to the addition of higher-paying long-distance passengers.
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It would be interesting if someone threw these number into Amtrak's face. Then the question how many did Amtrak carry from say Sanford thru Kissimmee -- to / from SE Florida.

That is an interesting question that won't be easily answered, due to the fact that Amtrak's services in Florida are also services that traverse out of state. IIRC, all the Amtrak routes that currently exist in Florida (which is just two) originate from up north in NYC, those routes being the Silver Star and Silver Meteor.

There are ridership numbers for that, but those include everyone that hopped on the train between NYC and Miami. Not sure if Amtrak publicly releases ridership numbers between stations like that, especially stations that are far away from Amtrak's bread-and-butter routes in the Northeast.

Note that Amtrak is legally required to rely on state funding for routes under 750 miles, and Florida has fare box recovery percentage requirements for subsidies, so its likely that simply getting funding for Amtrak to do anything competitive with Brightline is a non-starter absent changes in US and/or Florida law (i.e. you could get those numbers and present them to Amtrak and do what could they do with them?)

The only change in how Amtrak handles local passengers would be if the state of Florida decided it needed more train services for people living in places like Sebring, Okeechobee, and Palatka to Orlando, Tampa, Jacksonville, or Miami and was willing to provide the backing to get those services running.

west point wrote: ↑Sun Dec 03, 2023 2:05 pm It would be interesting if someone threw these number into Amtrak's face. Then the question how many did Amtrak carry from say Sanford thru Kissimmee -- to / from SE Florida.

It’s not a valid comparison.

- Brightline runs 26 round trips daily between Orlando and Miami. Amtrak runs 2, and they don’t work if you need to make a same-day round trip.
—-> Frequency is critical. The more frequent the service, the greater the ridership.

- Brightline’s travel time between Miami and Orlando is 3 hours 25 minutes. Amtrak’s is 5 hours 12 minutes, or, if you’re lucky and take 92, it’s 7 1/2 hours.

Those two facts make any comparison completely invalid. They’re not the same market, they’re not catering to the same people. Nothing Amtrak can do will make the two services comparable in any way. It’s like comparing driving across the country with riding a bike across the country.

It's actually insane how long it takes for Amtrak to get between Orlando and Miami

https://www.thenextmiami.com/brightline ... announced/

Orlando ridership of 93,184 for November, with an average fare of $89.72.

by car miami-orlando at 6:20pm is 235 miles, 3 1/2 hours, + tolls. They collected fares of presumably 38cents/mile, which is less than the cost of operating a car with 1 passenger. Trip time is about the same, should tip favorably towards Brightline for any rush hour trips. If they can make money at 38cents/passenger mile then this will be a winner. We know pretty much everything except the load factor.

Although probably not possible I would certainly like to know what Amtrak's ridership November 2023 from the 5 stations TPA - Winter Park compared to each year 2019 -2023. It may be Brightline has stolen some passengers from Amtrak? However, that is not a foregone conclusion as maybe some Brightline passengers might have used Amtrak one way for many different reasons?

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.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... p-forecast

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.

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.

Pre-openning projection vs actual. Not an actual decline