Did Florida get something right? High Speed rail service thriving

[marylander1940]

On 12/24/2023 at 3:22 PM, Vegas_Millennial said:

Train travel in the U.S. was quite popular in the 1940s.  People regularly traveled all over California and the West via train when it was much more sparsely populated than it is today.  It's not that Europe has more density than the U.S, it's that the U.S. has more travel options with a great Interstate Hghway System and lots of airports.  As roads become more congested and flying becomes less of a luxury and more onerous, train travel will once again become popular.

I think (fast) trains only make sense for commutes that are too close to fly and too far to drive. 

Example: LA to Vegas or hopefully one day San Francisco to Portland and Seattle. I'm aware there are daily flights by United to those cities from SFO but having to make it to the airports at least 2 to 1 1/2 hours before flight is too much wasted time. We should be able to go Downtown and take the train from city to city just like we do here in Washington when we travel to NYC. 

[EZEtoGRU]

Brightline Florida isn’t even that fast. It’s pretty slow between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.  It does pick up speed though on the final segment between WPB and Orlando…125mph I think.  By European/Asian standards, that’s not really high-speed. 

[ericwinters]

I read somewhere recentley, that Brighline is in sad financial shape.

[Luv2play]

20 hours ago, EZEtoGRU said:

Brightline Florida isn’t even that fast. It’s pretty slow between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.  It does pick up speed though on the final segment between WPB and Orlando…125mph I think.  By European/Asian standards, that’s not really high-speed. 

The problem as I see it is that in Florida cities you need a car to get around. Going from one city to another by train leaves you at the other end stranded. 
 

Here in Canada they are proposing a high speed train service that would include Montreal and Toronto. In both cities you can get around easily without a car except to the far flung suburbs. 
 

But most tourists just want to get around the downtowns which are densely constructed with most main attractions a 10 minute Uber ride away. 

Edited May 13 by Luv2play

[EZEtoGRU]

1 hour ago, ericwinters said:

I read somewhere recentley, that Brighline is in sad financial shape.

Yep. See my post up thread from yesterday. 

[marylander1940]

On 5/12/2026 at 12:02 PM, EZEtoGRU said:

Brightline Florida isn’t even that fast. It’s pretty slow between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale.  It does pick up speed though on the final segment between WPB and Orlando…125mph I think.  By European/Asian standards, that’s not really high-speed. 

yes, just like the Acela between NY and Boston, even though there are only 2 stops in CT, outdated infrastructure, sharp curves, and shared tracks create a bottleneck. 

Am I alone hoping to be able to take a fast train between DC and Boston (8 hours' drive) or DC to Chicago (11 hours' drive). Some fast trains could cover those distances in 3 to 4 hours. 

Edit: Actually, even faster than that. 

The fastest, actively operating train in the world is the Shanghai Maglev, which reaches top commercial speeds of 431 km/h (268 mph) using magnetic levitation. For conventional wheeled trains, the CR400 Fuxing Hao in China is the fastest, operating at 350 km/h (220 mph). Japan's L0 Series Maglev holds the all-time speed record at 603 km/h (375 mph)

Edited May 13 by marylander1940
Shanghai Maglev

[+ BOZO T CLOWN]

Unfortunately, the Brightline doesn't go anywhere near the Miami Airport . It terminates in downtown Miami which is about 10 miles from the airport.
It is a bit surprising that in a thread about rail transportation in South Florida there has been no mention of the tri-rail train. Bozo usually flies into/out of South Florida via FLL or PBI. But on the rare occasion he uses MIA, the tri-rail is a very economical, practical, and convenient alternative to UBER. 
Unlike the Brightline, the tri-rail was built to be a commuter train, so it runs slower than Brightline with more stops. But If you take the tri-rail to the Miami station, and transfer to the free shuttle to the airport, it is often quicker then an UBER,  which has to deal with the heavily trafficked, and now tolled, I-95 interstate highway.

BTC
🤡

[BigDMike]

On 5/17/2026 at 5:51 AM, BOZO T CLOWN said:

Unfortunately, the Brightline doesn't go anywhere near the Miami Airport . It terminates in downtown Miami which is about 10 miles from the airport.
It is a bit surprising that in a thread about rail transportation in South Florida there has been no mention of the tri-rail train. Bozo usually flies into/out of South Florida via FLL or PBI. But on the rare occasion he uses MIA, the tri-rail is a very economical, practical, and convenient alternative to UBER. 
Unlike the Brightline, the tri-rail was built to be a commuter train, so it runs slower than Brightline with more stops. But If you take the tri-rail to the Miami station, and transfer to the free shuttle to the airport, it is often quicker then an UBER,  which has to deal with the heavily trafficked, and now tolled, I-95 interstate highway.

BTC
🤡

I do all I can to avoid MIA and always choose FLL.

[samhexum]

Rail projects across the U.S. are proving harder for the Trump administration to stop than to start

By Jackie Snow

There is a lot of train infrastructure being built in the U.S. right now despite the Trump administration’s effort to choke off passenger rail funding. It killed $4 billion earmarked for California’s high-speed line, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy calling the project a waste of taxpayer money. The president has mocked it directly, and his administration is now pushing Congress to restrict funding for transit projects more broadly.

And yet, across the country, contractors are pouring concrete and laying track on projects worth tens of billions of dollars. In many cases, the money was committed and the contracts signed before Trump took office again. That head start has given the industry momentum that is proving difficult to stop.

Some train passengers are already experiencing the changes. Riders on the Northeast Corridor, the busiest rail line in the country, have had a faster commute for the last year. Amtrak’s new NextGen Acela now tops out at 160 mph between Washington and Boston, the quickest scheduled train in America.

Work on the Hudson Tunnel project, a $16 billion effort to add rail capacity between New Jersey and New York, has continued after a court blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to withhold its funding over diversity practices. New York also awarded a $1.02 billion contract for a separate subway extension this spring.

Chicago’s $5.7 billion Red Line Extension broke ground in April despite local political fighting. Los Angeles opened the first section of its $2.4 billion D Line subway extension in May, with the rest targeted for completion before the 2028 Olympics.

There’s movement in Congress as well, where two representatives re-introduced a bill that would direct up to $205 billion toward high-speed rail over five years, with 46 co-sponsors from 20 states. It stalled in committee the last time it came up, but its return signals that appetite for rail investment hasn’t disappeared on Capitol Hill, even if it currently lacks a path to the president’s desk.

States are also looking for ways to attract more private capital as federal support retreats. California’s High Speed Rail Authority signed a co-development deal with a consortium called Momentum Alliance Partners to explore private investment options, and it opened bidding for a $2.4 billion extension project. Brightline West, a privately operated high-speed rail project backed by a mix of public and private financing, is building a line between Las Vegas and Southern California, though its projected cost has grown from $12 billion to $21.5 billion.

The momentum has limits, especially when compared to other countries. The Urban Institute estimates the U.S. added just 3.7 miles of subway track and about 13 miles of light rail in 2025, a fraction of what cities like Madrid or Seoul managed during their expansion years. New York’s Second Avenue Subway extension, one of the only true heavy rail projects underway, is expected to cost $7 billion for roughly two miles of new track, making it one of the most expensive subway projects ever built.

California’s project remains the starkest example of the gap between ambition and delivery. The state needs $126 billion to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles and has only $39.3 billion secured or projected through 2045, leaving an $87 billion hole.

Even the Amtrak win comes with an asterisk. At 160 mph on decades-old Northeast Corridor track, the Acela still falls short of the 186 mph threshold most experts use to define true high-speed rail. By that stricter definition, no one in the U.S. can currently ride a true high-speed train.

There is also a new competitor for political attention. Autonomous vehicle funding has more than tripled in 2026, driven largely by Waymo’s $16 billion raise earlier this year. The Trump administration is also supporting autonomous cars as part of its broader AI push.

Rail projects do not stop costing money once the ribbon is cut. Systems require continued spending on operations, maintenance and future expansions. At the same time, autonomous vehicles could create new demands for road upgrades, curb space and other infrastructure that give policymakers another reason to prioritize cars over transit.

This focus on car infrastructure isn’t new. Starting in the 1950s, the country chose to pour money into highways instead of the passenger rail systems already in decline. That choice may end up repeating itself, this time in favor of a driverless car fleet over light rail and subway lines still inching forward.