[HN Gopher] Brightline Orlando's first train: 125 mph from MCO t...
___________________________________________________________________
Brightline Orlando's first train: 125 mph from MCO to MIA [video]
Author : ipnon
Score : 35 points
Date : 2023-09-24 17:59 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
| brigadier132 wrote:
| Ive ridden it between miami and Fort Lauderdale. Its very
| comfortable and a much much nicer experience than driving but its
| not for the price conscious. It makes me wish the us had a much
| better rail system.
| gavinray wrote:
| My wife and I live in Miami, and she's been waiting for this for
| years.
|
| She's a huge Disney fan but it's a bit of a haul to drive to
| Orlando. Now it'll be cake to go to Disney.
| missingcolours wrote:
| Connecting to airports as transportation hubs is interesting and
| makes a lot of sense - gives you access to 24/7 rental cars, air
| travel, and often rail connections to downtown areas. One thing
| with traveling on Amtrak in most of America is it plops you in a
| downtown with few options for getting anywhere.
| pm3003 wrote:
| There are a few airports in Europe with a high-speed train
| station in the airport, like Roissy in Paris (sadly the trains
| don't go to Paris, wouldn't be French enough) or Dusseldorf and
| Frankfurt. It can be extremely practical to take the train to
| downtown wherever in the country instead of waiting 5 hours for
| your connecting flight to an airport 20 miles away from
| civilization.
| crote wrote:
| The problem is that you get stuck in a local maximum.
|
| Nobody really _wants_ to be at an airport. They are located on
| the outskirts of cities due to noise issues, and you still have
| to spend quite a lot of time traveling to downtown or even the
| completely opposite side of the city. It is also extremely
| difficult to actually build things near the train station due
| to all the space being required for the airport itself.
|
| Compare the Orlando terminal[0] with a train station like
| Amsterdam Zuid[1], which is going to be the terminus for high-
| speed trains in the near future. Orlando has rental cars and
| taxis. Amsterdam Zuid has 32 semi-local trains per hour, 3
| metro lines each serving 6 trains per hour in either direction,
| 9 bus lines with similar frequencies, and 2 comparable tram
| lines.
|
| The Orlando terminal is within walking distance of Orlando
| Airport terminal C. Amsterdam Zuid is within walking distance
| of a major hospital, a major university, and offices for
| multinationals like Google, Accenture, and the European
| Medicine Agency.
|
| When you have to rent a car to get to your destination anyways,
| why bother taking a train?
|
| [0]:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Brightline+Orlando+Train+S...
|
| [1]:
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Amsterdam+Zuid/@52.334522,...
| firesteelrain wrote:
| Link: https://www.orlandoairports.net/parking-transportation/
|
| Orlando (MCO) has:
|
| Local public Lynx buses with red color at front - are located
| At Terminal A, level 1, at Commercial Lane spaces A38-A41 and
| serve the following areas: (current bus fare is $2): - To
| Downtown Orlando (40 mins): Lynx bus 11 via Orange Avenue;
| Lynx bus 51via Conway; - To International Drive (60 mins):
| Lynx Bus 42 . - To Forida Mall /Sea World (45 mins): Lynx bus
| 111. - To new Sand Lake Road SunRail Station* (3 miles from
| Airport): take the local Lynx bus stopping at Terminal A,
| level 1, at Commercial Lane spaces A38-41. Local buses are
| also available to Winter Park/ Maitland; Lake Buena Vista,
| Kissimmee, Disney's Maingate, & Walt Disney World.
|
| (Not counting all of the hotel buses or cruise ship buses)
|
| * Uber and Lyft near infinite transport in addition to taxi's
|
| By Train: * The SunRail runs between DeBary (northwest of
| Sanford) and Sand Lake Road) For more information on SunRail
| service call 1-855--RAIL-411 or visit:
| sunrail.com/default.aspx. NOTE: The Lynx bus located on the
| A-side of the Terminal, at level 1, commercial lane spaces
| A38-A41 - connects to the Sand Lake Road SunRail station. For
| Amtrak service located at 250 Columbia Street, Orlando - 12
| miles from the Airport - you can take the Lynx bus 11 to
| Orange Avenue & Columbia Street - taking a total of 30
| minutes. The Amtrak station is about half a mile from the bus
| stop, down Columbia Street, then left onto Sligh Blvd.
|
| - this is in addition to the new BrightLine
|
| * By Car
|
| - Personal travel, rental car, guests picking you up or local
| parking lots both on premises and off premises (private lots)
|
| I don't think Orlando and Zurich compare.
|
| Are you going to walk off the Orlando airport to somewhere
| else without being on some sort of transportation? No. But
| you aren't going to do that at Oslo airport either. You need
| to take a train or bus for example to Oslo Central Station or
| elsewhere - similar to Zurich.
| yterdy wrote:
| Every train station I've been to in the Northeast has been
| within a few minutes walk of a subway station, light rail
| station, bus hub, or taxi stand. What you mean by "few options"
| is "no car rental", which is an unfortunate consequence of our
| auto-centric psychology.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, yes, Amtrak in the Northeast is convenient if you want
| to go downtown at a stop. It's mostly a poor choice if you
| want to rent a car and go somewhere else in which case you're
| probably better flying or just driving in the first place.
|
| Not sure about car-centric philosophy. It's about the
| destination for a given trip. No judgement about it.
| coev wrote:
| It's $80 per person each way for a ticket from west palm beach
| station to orlando. That's $160 roundtrip. Even for one person,
| it can be cheaper to rent a car and pay the gas/turnpike tolls
| than to buy one roundtrip ticket, and you won't be stranded 20
| minutes away from downtown and the tourist attractions over at
| MCO airport.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| America and trains: the little engine that could ?
| kibwen wrote:
| America has removed more miles of railway than most other
| countries have ever had. I hold out hope that high-speed rail
| is still possible, at least between the major population
| centers in each region. The good news is that airports and
| flying are abjectly miserable experiences, which makes people
| willing to look at alternatives.
| Robotbeat wrote:
| Nah. Flying is awesome. Especially without the TSA.
|
| But Brightline is technically HSR running on a converted
| line.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Brightline is the sweat spot for HSR in the US, between
| population centers annoyingly long to drive but annoyingly
| short to fly. Long haul air transport isn't going away, but
| these short hops are the best places to build HSR.
| Tangentially, this frees up airport gates for routes that
| cannot be accomplished by rail.
|
| My understanding is that their future rail segments are
| focused on these routes.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| Brightline is only really HSR under the 1970s pre
| TGV/Bullet Train definition. Most of the world has moved
| on to using 250km/h (155mph) as the cut off with many new
| lines over 300km/h (185mph).
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| We can quibble over the definition of high speed rail in
| speed, but what's important is that light rail enables
| transportation for people who can't or prefer not to
| drive, who can't afford a car for these trips, and
| overall takes cars off the road. Faster isn't always
| better depending on the distance traveled (time saved
| going much faster over these shorter routes is going to
| be marginal vs cross country); sometimes faster than the
| status quo is fast enough.
| laurencerowe wrote:
| I agree that regional services are generally more
| important than long distance HSR. It's absurd that the 80
| mile trip from Oakland to Sacramento takes 2 hours.
|
| FWIW, Brightline is very traditional heavy rail. It even
| uses locomotives rather than the more efficient diesel
| multiple units typically used on similar non-electrified
| routes in Europe.
|
| For stopping services there are big advantages to going
| electric since they are able to accelerate much faster.
| The electrification work on Caltrain between San
| Francisco and San Jose is almost complete. This should
| make most trips much faster though probably won't make
| much difference to the express services.
|
| Light rail usually refers to the in-city services
| operated with smaller street-car/tram like vehicles.
| These tend not to be very fast with top speeds around
| 50mph when operating on dedicated track, but it doesn't
| usually matter as they stop very frequently.
| mcculley wrote:
| It is mid-speed rail. The top speed is claimed to be 125
| MPH.
| snakeyjake wrote:
| >The good news is that airports and flying are abjectly
| miserable experiences
|
| I have always had fantastic airport and flying experiences.
|
| Of course, I pay today almost exactly what I paid for airline
| tickets in the 80s and 90s, adjusting for inflation.
|
| That means I don't buy $90 fares on airlines where I have to
| scramble like a pig at a trough for a seat.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Where do you fly out of?
|
| At SEA it's pretty miserable unless you pay for PreCheck
| and Clear, which just feels like TSA making the entire
| thing shitty and then shaking you down for money to make it
| not shitty.
| ghaff wrote:
| If you fly any amount paying for PreCheck is just part of
| the deal. It's the way it is.
| richwater wrote:
| Flying is miserable because consumers demand low prices.
| There is no forces that would change this when applied to
| trains.
| kibwen wrote:
| The expense of railway lies in acquiring the land and
| laying the track in the first place. Once that's done, the
| operational costs are negligible relative to an airline. Of
| course, getting those land rights is often an
| insurmountable nightmare in its own right.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Well, other than the interest on the bonds, because no
| one pays for any infrastructure or otherwise with
| outright cash.
| tyingq wrote:
| >There is no forces that would change this when applied to
| trains.
|
| I'm not sure how successful it's been, but this article[1]
| for Deutsche Bahn's "ICE" first class makes it look
| attractive to me.
|
| I think because space isn't as much a premium, the upcharge
| for first class on a train can be a much smaller jump than
| the economy -> first class jump on a plane.
|
| [1] https://onemileatatime.com/deutsche-bahn-ice-first-
| class-rev...
| ghaff wrote:
| First class on a train relative to standard seating is
| also much less of a big deal than planes in general.
| nharada wrote:
| Isn't the counter-example in America cars? It's definitely
| cheaper to have an econo-box but instead we drive 8 seat
| tanks to get groceries.
| dboreham wrote:
| You never know when you'll need to pick up a sofa on sale
| at Costco.
| vel0city wrote:
| Plus at Costco couches only come in 2-packs even though
| lots of the time just one would last you the week.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Flying can get expensive fairly quickly.
|
| One major source of this is landing fees; at heavily
| congested airports the price to get a new slot, or buy
| someone out of an existing one, is quite high because of a
| lack of space and alternatives. Most of the airports in the
| Northeast are chronically congested, to the point where I
| believe DCA and all the New York area airports have _caps_
| on flight movements. And there 's no 'cheap' airport in the
| NYC area either, which is a common tactic for Ryanair et al
| (fly into an airport over 50 miles away for the cheaper
| landing fees, which means cheaper tickets, but also
| probably means the passenger is making up the difference
| getting to their final destination.)
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| How is this 125 mph when it's same travel time as by car?
|
| YT vid says Journey Time: 3 hr 33 min
|
| Google maps says this 3h30m by car MCO to MIA.
|
| Security overhead on the train looks medium, with TSA-style
| scanners but otherwise normal walk-up access when train arrives.
|
| 1h flight (tho add 1-2h for airport overhead)
|
| Price: $79 (Smart), $149 (Premium)
| t3rabytes wrote:
| Brightline takes a bit of a longer path (straight to the coast
| and down) than can via car (more direct).
| mcculley wrote:
| For most of the route, it cannot go that fast. It is mid-speed
| rail, at best.
| xnx wrote:
| I wondered the same thing. I think 125 mph is peak, not
| average, speed. I think average speed is something like 70 mph.
| ipnon wrote:
| If you fly or drive, it's about the same time but you arrive
| feeling drained. The train is cheaper and you arrive feeling
| refreshed. Travel should be pleasant and enjoyable, like the
| golden days of aviation!
| pmayrgundter wrote:
| thx all, yeah, suspected as much. I guess it's also their
| maiden trip, so maybe they'll tune up the route in the future.
| I think when Acela started in Northeast it took awhile before
| it was regularly up to speed
| jeffbee wrote:
| [flagged]
| pm3003 wrote:
| European high-speed trains do 195mph, no security controls except
| between France and Great Britain, relatively cheap, and often
| cheaper and faster than planes up to 600 miles, taking into
| account transportation to the airport and time lost waiting at
| the airport, since airports are often inefficient and can be
| quite poorly connected given the traffic.
| Symbiote wrote:
| High-speed trains in Spain also have a security check; luggage
| is x-rayed. It is a bit simpler than the London-Paris/Brussels
| check, as it isn't combined with a passport check.
|
| (And also in China, though there they also have similar checks
| at some metro and other railway stations.)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-09-24 23:02 UTC)