
One-Of-a-Kind Private Train Takes on Florida’s Traffic Nightmare - jseliger
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-11/miami-commuter-train-to-blast-through-florida-traffic-nightmare
======
wallflower
Historical note: Miami owes its founding to Julia Tuttle's successful sales
pitch to a railroad company.

> Julia Tuttle, a local landowner, convinced Henry Flagler, a railroad tycoon,
> to expand his Florida East Coast Railway to Miami. On July 28, 1896, Miami
> was officially incorporated as a city with a population of just over 300.

> Julia DeForest Tuttle was an American businesswoman who was largely
> responsible for, and the original owner of, the land upon which Miami,
> Florida, was built. For this reason, she is called the "Mother of Miami".

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Miami](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Miami)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Tuttle)

~~~
dforrestwilson
Part of Flagler's motivation for building the railroad was beach property
rights. The government at the time incentived railroad construction by
granting land along the sides of the rails extending several miles.

By building the railroad Flagler gained rights to most of Florida's east coast
beach property. So in a sense, Miami was a giant public works project.

Are we going to be willing to do the same for space exploration?

~~~
virmundi
I doubt it. NASA and the US government has lost its sense of adventure and
conquering spirit. Too many people in the administration (not Trump's, but
rather the deep-state) are 1) afraid of deaths, 2) afraid of being seen as
colonizers. That's why we don't have moon bases yet. People couldn't figure
out a need, so they became timid hamsters with their Shuttle. So our
magnificent men in their flying machines just "go up tiddly up up,they go down
tiddly down down." [1]

1 -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUTBYI6rcxs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUTBYI6rcxs)

~~~
awful
What I saw over decades after Apollo was an unrelenting pounding by Congress,
specifically Republicans in regards to cost and commercial payback, and
Democrats in regards to why are we spending money out there when it is needed
here, instead. Not a "deep state", of which even if it did exist would have
then been filled with the unimaginative and risk adverse since because of my
previous point.

~~~
virmundi
Deep-state doesn't just mean conspiratorial "them/they". It means all of the
bureaucratic individuals that haunt the halls of government between
administrations and Congressional turnover. They drive policy. They are around
for years. It's these unimaginative individuals that hold us back.

Republicans wanted a payback. That's fine. Every colonial backer wants that.
The argument could have been fusion. We'd extract helium on the moon. We'd
also have the ability for meta-materials fabrication there given the weaker
gravity. All of this could have been wrapped up in the Republican's favorite
spending bucket: war readiness. Few argued for that at the time.

The Democrats did what you said, tried to keep their plantations populated
through bread and circuses. They lacked the ability to see how colonization
would provide jobs and reduce crime by allowing people that don't fit well in
society an outlet like the US had with its Western frontier.

At this point the US is too indebted to support such a program, at least at a
governmental level. I think our only hope is private parities establishing
their own colonies in order to create meta-materials from mined asteroids.

~~~
jamesmcnalley
> They lacked the ability to see how colonization would provide jobs and
> reduce crime by allowing people that don't fit well in society an outlet
> like the US had with its Western frontier.

I’m not sure that criminals and other social misfits would be welcome in space
exploration / colonization. Space is a harsh environment that requires
cooperative behavior just to stay alive. Colonization occurred in places where
there was oxygen, food and water. The main skills needed were very basic
survival skills, and a willingness to murder the non-European (and sometimes
European) locals that got in the way.

We are a long way away from the point where we could tolerate a showdown at
high noon in space, though that might make for a profitable summer
blockbuster.

~~~
marksbrown
His point to my mind was that life is viewed too sacrosanct given that there
are individuals willing to go.

~~~
jamesmcnalley
The prior poster was explicitly talking about reducing crime by exporting
criminals. That’s not a cheap way to execute “undesirable” people, and if they
aren’t killed on the way up, we end up with people who are not a great fit for
the demands of living in space, however willing prisoners may be to go.

I hope we can find a more humane way to deal with our troubled fellow humans
than to send them on suicide missions.

------
yardie
I took the inaugural train this weekend from Miami to Ft. Lauderdale. The
distance is 24miles as the crow flies and the journey exactly 30 minutes. So
the average speed for this leg of the journey was 48mph.

This same journey would take 45 minutes by car in the express lane. I don't
even want to imagine what this would be in the non-express during rush hour.

~~~
sandos
That is a really slow train, almost makes it sound like a tram. How many stops
were there?

Trains here in Sweden, albeit for longer distances usually go either 120, 160
or 200 km/h. Thats 74/100/124 miles/h.

~~~
snaily
Just looked up an example to compare: Östertälje-Uppsala C, a large part of a
Stockholm commuter train line, is 102 km long, and takes 1:32h for an average
speed of 66km/h, or 41mph, below the 45mph quoted in the article.

The acceleration and waiting at stations really hits the average.

~~~
masklinn
This is a regional train not commuter. According to the official website there
is no stop between Miami and Ft Lauredale: [https://gobrightline.com/fort-
lauderdale/](https://gobrightline.com/fort-lauderdale/)

~~~
gsnedders
A better comparison is the Stockholm C – Uppsala C SJ-operated non-stop
services, which like the Miami to Ft Lauredale services take exactly 30
minutes.

This is 63 km (39 mi) as the crow flies (66 km by track), so an average speed
of 126 km/h (78 mph), substantially quicker than the Miami to Ft Lauredale
service.

~~~
tssva
Taking a look at Google maps that is not really comparable either. Much of the
area between them appears to be rural with a low population density where as
Miami to Ft Lauderdale is high population density the entire route. Train
speeds are limited in high density areas for safety.

~~~
gsnedders
> Train speeds are limited in high density areas for safety.

There are _plenty_ of places in Europe where 100mph+ running through urban
areas is common. Urban v. rural isn't really a consideration for line speeds
here. Heck, most of the mainlines north and west out of London reach their
125mph top speeds while still within Greater London. The question here is more
about the presence and type of at-grade crossings, and there's a fair number
on lines with 125mph running.

------
BurningFrog
This is a sadly dishonest sounding comparison...

"The train runs at a top speed of 79 miles per hour on the leg between Miami
and Fort Lauderdale compared to an average speed of about 34 miles per hour
for cars"

~~~
ubernostrum
Top speed of 79 is also the case for Caltrain in the SF Bay area.

Which only happens on certain stretches of track, and can be affected by how
many stops a particular train needs to make or how many others are ahead of
it.

~~~
melling
What’s the average speed?

For a distance of 30 miles, shouldnt we be able to build a train that averages
60 mph for 30 minutes?

China is working on low-speed maglevs.

~~~
bobthepanda
The problem is the rule of diminishing returns. Unless you want your
passengers vomiting everywhere, there are limits to how quickly you can
accelerate and decelerate, and you spend less and less time going at the top
speed. It's why subways don't generally bother going much above a 50-70MPH top
speed.

Unless you're building a straight line, you need larger and larger curves to
accommodate high speed traffic, which makes the cost of higher speed rise
significantly since you can't just buy a curve and split a property in two. A
train going at 220 km/h has a minimum curve radius of 2.5km; a train at 300
km/h has a minimum curve radius of 4km; and a train at 350 km/h has a minimum
curve radius of 7km.

~~~
waterhouse
Your numbers seem off. Traveling in a circle at constant speed implies
acceleration of v^2 / r, so, holding acceleration constant and doubling
velocity, I'd expect the necessary radius to double. A Wiki article seems to
roughly agree with me.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_railway_curve_radius#S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_railway_curve_radius#Speed_and_cant)

However, from your numbers, 4km * (350 / 300)^2 = 5.4 km, not 7 km. The Wiki
article agrees with the 300 km/h => 4km radius data point, but agrees with me
for 350 km/h, and actually says 400 km/h => 7 km. Was it a typo on your part,
or am I missing something?

~~~
bobthepanda
I got those figures from here:
[https://books.google.com/books?id=apKZDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA187&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=apKZDgAAQBAJ&pg=PA187&lpg=PA195&dq=tgv+curve+radii&source=bl&ots=L0NO7XuLq7&sig=fy1rmA-8xC3-QmbIqpJ4kqLct4I&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjB5MG8iJbbAhWLiVQKHdK6DDYQ6AEIlAEwCA#v=onepage&q=tgv%20curve%20radii&f=false).
But maybe the French are overengineering? Entirely possible.

~~~
waterhouse
I see, thanks for the citation. It looks like those are numbers for a few
actual railways—i.e. "On railway X, the maximum speed somewhere along the
track is n, and the minimum radius of curvature is r." Explanations could be:
(a) the path of the train didn't really need any sharper turns (i.e. "minimum
allowable radius" ≠ "minimum radius we chose"); (b) different architects,
working at different times, possibly using different materials, chose
different safety margins; (c) perhaps one of the lines is designed to carry
taller or heavier trains.

I do believe that, _holding everything else constant_ , the minimum allowable
radius would be proportional to the square of the velocity of the train. If
you look at table 6.15 on page 183, it compares 250 km/h with 350 km/h, and
350/250 = 7/5, and (7/5)^2 = 49/25 = 1.96, so I would predict the radius would
be roughly 2x for 350 as for 250, and, if you compare corresponding entries in
the table, you see this holds very well for the columns labeled "(1)" and for
the rightmost three columns, although those labeled "(2)" (apparently done
with a different calculation—I can't see the page the calculation is from)
diverge somewhat.

------
foobarian
At $10 a ticket sounds like they would need to move ~32k passengers every day
for 10 years to break even on the $1.2B purely from tickets. I wonder what
other subsidies are coming in to make this make sense.

~~~
rayiner
They’re using the Hong Kong/Japan model. They own land along the route and are
already doing a lot of high density development around the Miami station.

There is a lot of solid economics behind this approach. The problem with
infrastructure is that it generates a lot of positive externality. The
passenger benefits, but so too does the business that employs the commuters
who ride in rail, or the retail owners. Inability to capture revenues from
these sources makes infrastructure investment less attractive than it
otherwise should be.

~~~
azemetre
Why is this a bad thing? Public projects should be works that benefit the
public at large, why doe everything have to lead to profit?

We have a national government, why can't they provide grants to increase and
build more railways? I mean the US government provides billions in
grants/money to maintain and build roads because States are unable, whether
politically or mathematically, to raise taxes to cover the true costs of road
maintenance.

~~~
rayiner
I think Brightline is a really good thing, if NIMBYIM doesn’t kill it.

As to the government building things: it can’t. For whatever reason our
governments in the US are completely unable to build and maintain
infrastructure, especially transit. The two best American systems, NYC and DC,
are in shambles now after decades of mismanagement. This is not unique to
transit: local governments all over the country are poisoning kids through
ancient lead water pipes. We are unwilling to spend the money, and when we do,
our outrageous public unions and NIMBYism cause things to cost multiples what
it costs Europe or Asia.

That’s not true of all governments. (Though, I think you’d be surprised to see
that most European countries have a heavier dose of privatization than the US,
though less than Japan.) But for whatever reason, maybe some moral deficiency
in our body politic, its true of ours. Given that, developing a market
solution is a good option. And allowing the transit provider to “tax” both
sides of the equation by charging fares as well as rents on surrounding land,
is an economically sound way of optimizing the incentive to invest.

------
forrestthewoods
Wait, they've spend 1.5 billion dollars for 30 miles of train? That's only 50
million per mile!

Most city light-rail projects in the US are 150 to 200 million per above-
ground mile. [https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-
ex...](https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/01/why-its-so-expensive-to-
build-urban-rail-in-the-us/551408/)

~~~
yardie
The track was already there. $50mm/mi is just new stations, trains, and
signaling.

~~~
zaroth
And they still don’t have signaling that qualifies for going >= 80mph. I don’t
get it?

------
HarryHirsch
Commuters between Miami and Ft Lauderdale can already take Tri-Rail; service
started in 1990. What's missing?

~~~
josephpmay
Double average speed, fewer stops, station is in Downtown FTL instead of West
of I95, doesn’t have the stigma that it’s what poor people take when they
can’t afford a car

~~~
Nition
They are actually careful not to say the average speed, only the _top_ speed.
But they then compare the top speed to the _average_ speed of cars.

------
CalRobert
Fantastic! This sort of thing would be more common if we had user fees on the
US' most-used form of transport (roads) as opposed to making them a taxpayer-
subsidized all-you-can-drive buffet that you get to pay for whether you use it
or not. (Fuel taxes only cover about half of road building/maintenance costs,
and that share has fallen over the years)

------
Derbasti
"High-speed train" ... "runs at a top speed of 79 miles per hour". That
doesn't sound right.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
speed_rail](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-speed_rail)

~~~
dx034
It'll run at 200km/h to Orlando once that part's open. 200km/h also qualifies
as high-speed in Europe. But technically, the parts open currently are not
high-speed.

~~~
masklinn
> 200km/h also qualifies as high-speed in Europe.

Only for refits of existing lines. For new lines it's 240.

------
vondur
20$ a day for a commute is going to block the people that would benefit the
most. Only middle and upper middle class people will be able to afford it.

~~~
fma
If someone is making minimum wage, I doubt they are commuting from Palm Beach
to Fort Lauderdale in the first place.

~~~
noobermin
If you commute using this, it would cost 100usd a week. Doesn't seem feasible
except for the upper middle class.

~~~
strictnein
Assuming no discounts for frequent use, $400 is less than a car payment,
insurance, maintenance, and gas would be. If there are discounts it would be
even more reasonable, especially for middle class families trying to decide
whether or not to get a second vehicle.

~~~
noobermin
I definitely agree with you re the cost of owning a car but I don't think
people will sell their car to just ride this train. They still have to alight
and navigate either city using their possibly poor transit system.

Could see it making an effect on marginal[0] decisions (like buying a second
car as you state) but it still sounds more to me like being used more for one
off trips than for commuting. It's far to expensive for that.

[0] marginal in the economic sense

~~~
usrusr
One-off trips require learning a new mode of transport, so one-off are a
natural weak spot of a "new" mode of transport. (how much time buffer do I
need at the station, how do I conveniently pay for my ticket and so on).
Getting people to switch rarely happens.

Your best bet, as a new rail line are people whose regular transportation
demands change while the line is still new and shiny (e.g. new job at the far
end of the line, do I drive/move/rail?). This also meshes very well with the
real estate development model of financing the line.

------
uniacid
As a South Floridian sorry to say but this is probably a massive waste of
money and investment in an old technology that frankly I don't see how it's
going to benefit people when it only has a few stops and because it can't seem
to stop killing people it seems to be running slower and slower every week,
wasn't this supposed to be a "Fast" train?

Also sure Florida has plenty of freight trains, something I'm used to but it
seems like Brightline passes more frequently (not sure if they're still doing
test runs here and there) which mess up local traffic patterns especially in
rush hour times.

~~~
CalRobert
" it can't seem to stop killing people it seems to be running slower and
slower every week, "

I presume you aren't familiar with how well freeways perform in this respect?

------
tehabe
I like trains, I prefer them over any highway project any time. But I have a
few concerns about this train service.

Like it has only 8 north and 8 south bound trains per day. Will this be really
interesting for enough commuters to switch?

Also most people won't be at their destination when the train stops at a
station, will the ticket be compatible with other transit providers?

Nevertheless I hope it is a success, even though the patriotism on the site is
annoying me: "We’re American-made and 100% Buy America-compliant." At least
the trains were made by Siemens. ;-)

~~~
Shivetya
you get them to switch provided your end points are convenient and have
adequate last mile options to get people to their destination.

the problem with trains is they are not flexible to change in population needs
where buses are. however since this is between two cities it avoids a lot of
waste that is inherent in light rail that cities use for metro transit.

the real numbers that matter is maintenance, how is this budgeted for. one of
the major issues facing public light rail is the tens of billions in deferred
maintenance combined with removing buses because of the cost of paying for the
rail.

will this succeed? who knows, they have to convince people that it is worth
their time and money to park their car at point A, ride the train to point B,
and secure transportation at cost to their destination if it is not close.
that is a lot to overcome and the city needs to assist by not preventing ride
hailing services and taxis from providing options at both ends as well as
making sure if there are local bus services that they do come to the stations

~~~
tehabe
I like light rails, prefer them over busses. People kinda trust light rail
more than busses, because for light rail you need a track and a station, for
busses you just need a bus stop sign.

My bigger point is, when you $10 for a ticket with the train you need to pay
additionally for you next leg of the commute. If you commute it is really a
good idea when the ticket is valid for your entire commute, not matter to
which transport you transfer: train, light rail, or bus.

------
chiefalchemist
At 50k ft this sounds great. On the other hand, is the $10 fare sustainable?
At what point will, fare reflect cost? Will, in time, taxpayers - local and
national - be called upon to subsidize and/or bail this effort out?

I hope it work. But I can't help being a bit cynical.

p.s. I hope this train floats because it won't be long before Miami is
treading (climate change) water.

~~~
jsilence
You ackknowledge the topic of climate change and yet you fail to make the
connection to the much more enrgy efficient transportation system trains are?

Are the costs to counter the effects of sea level rise (in Miami) accounted
for in car transportation? We are already bailing out fossil fuelled
individual motorized transport, but who is attributing these costs to the
culprit?

~~~
chiefalchemist
I didn't fail to make the connection. One train isn't going to save Miami.

I might even go so far to argue that projects such as this (e.g., the ship is
going down but the band keeps playing) led the general public to believe that
there's nothing to worry about. "Who would build a billion+ train that's going
to end up under water?"

It's a good idea. Or is it?

------
fma
Former South Floridian here asking any current South Floridian. Thoughts on
Tri-Rail Coastal Link? Yay, or Nay?

------
Gravityloss
Miami also has a cool small futuristic monorail. It's free too, recommended
for the views!

~~~
rileyphone
It is pretty cute, though it's slow, unreliable, and services only three
neighborhoods. I live 50 ft from a stop and rarely find myself using it.

~~~
Gravityloss
Yeah, I guess most such things would need a big network effect to be
successful.

I don't know which places people go to in Miami anyway, besides the beach ;)

------
Overtonwindow
This reminds me of the subway system in Sydney Australia. Lots of private
lines branching off.

~~~
djsumdog
Are there a lot of private trains in Sydney? Melbourne has the regional
V-lines, but other than that, I think it's the iter-city touristy rail lines
(i.e. The Overland to Adelaide).

Sydney to Melbourne was the most traveled air route in the world at one point.
There really needs to be a high speed line between the through via the ACT.
They could have probably built one with the money the wasted on Myki.

~~~
toomanybeersies
Flights between Melbourne and Sydney are cheap though, and already fairly
fast.

The train would need to be under 4 hours to really be competitive with flying.

It could be done, with something like a TGV style train. I can't imagine how
much it would cost though.

~~~
forapurpose
> Flights between Melbourne and Sydney are cheap

It may be expensive if you include the externalities of climate change.

~~~
dx034
With most Electricity in the region from coal, externalities of a high speed
train might not be much better, esp considering the environmental impact of
tracks. I'm a fan of trains but high-speed rail consumes a lot of energy.

~~~
forapurpose
How much energy is used by the two technologies to move 100 people 100 miles?
I'd bet flying them consumes a lot more, but I don't know much about the train
technologies.

