SunRail Ridership

Noel Weaver wrote:Make sure any railroad job you take is not covered by Railroad Retirement or you will lose your whole pension for that month. Otherwise it is not a bad idea. On Tri-Rail the conductor's biggest job is opening and closing the doors and handling the handicap bridge plates when needed which is fairly often. I suspect this one works about the same way.
Noel Weaver

Never worked the rails, retired Navy and police/paramedic.

phillyrube wrote:So what's it like working for Sunrail? Retired from up north, looking for something part time, conductor sounds like it would be fun.

there are no "part-time" jobs at sunrail. without current certification, getting into the place as a t&e employee would be virtually impossible. ridership still continues its slow decline. expansion north to deland or points further north, are dead at this point. airport expansion is dead at this point. (well, maybe not dead. but, without overnight or weekend service, would you take a train to the airport?) sometime next year service to the giant, open field in the middle of no-where, kissimmee, will happen. maybe.

All of the above would seem to be good fuel to shoot down any further passenger rail proposals in Florida. Things are bad enough there already in that regard; the last thing's that's needed now is more negative press.

not sure that the "negative press" is any big secret. the orlando paper regularly covers the sunrail scene. at the last reporting time (waiting to see the fiscal report for the present year) it was costing the taxpayers about $38.00 spent for every dollar taken in. we're pretty sure we have the highest operating ratio of any railroad in the u.s. ridership is down, due to a combination of the "i-4 ultimate project" not being as bad for traffic as originally sold to the public, and low gas prices. we now offer airport service, but you get off in sand lake, and take a bus. as long as you aren't traveling early in the morning, late at night, or on a weekend/holiday, this might work for you.

add in a railroad that shuts down for hours at a time, if a car is hit, or a fatality occurs, and you're left with with a mon-fri, daylight service railroad, that may or may not get you to work/home, on time. it doesn't inspire a ton of confidence in the general public, but there is a pretty hardcore group of riders that seem to be willing to gamble on getting there on-time. volusia county wants out of the deal, since they feel they shouldn't cover a third of the operating costs, for a railroad that runs only three miles into their county to serve a single, end of the line station. we won't even mention the ever-growing equipment "dead-line" that's keeping expansion of service , a questionable idea at the moment.

it isn't stagnating, or becoming a burden, due to the crews. we're doing everything we can to make it work, short of hanging out on street corners during our off-time, and begging people to come out for a ride. and the realization still remains, for every dollar we collect, we pay out thirty eight.....

I don't think it is fair to blame the railroad for delays due to police activity after an incident. Police departments don't care about train riders and they take their sweet time to investigate everything that happens that they get called for. Police officers are not particularly savy around railroads either. This can work but they need to run on weekends and in the evenings as well.
Noel Weaver

Orlando is the type of City that is packed at night and pretty empty during the workday. Of course this does not account for the people who spend their time working indoors as opposed to hanging out on the streets. Personally nights and weekends are usually the only times I would ride the Sunrail which is never available when I need it. A simple fix would be a bus that serves the stations or even exists off of I4, however, the agencies are separated. Perhaps if ridership is low enough, the bus might not be the most economical way. Seminole county experimented with covering part of an Uber/Lyft trip, however, that did not last too long.