Brightline is a privately-run passenger train in South Florida. I’ve ridden it, and it’s incredibly fast and comfortable and futuristic, but the trains are strikingly and persistently empty. In a way this doesn’t really matter though because Brightline is a real estate development company that happens to nominally operate some trains?
Like, what has really gotten local governments excited (and what keeps the whole enterprise afloat) is the massive office and retail developments that are planned to accompany these new stations, especially in Miami. Plunking down a train station generates the impression that the neighbourhood will be important and accessible in the future and therefore companies will pay a premium to locate there even if the train isn’t particularly useful yet - and so the neighbourhood becomes important as those companies move in as kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Local politicians love this sort of outcome so it’s unsurprising that they want Brightline to expand to Tampa even as its current expansion to Orlando is still at least three years off.
As Sunbelt cities grow faster than state and local governments are willing to fund commuter transit, this kind of real estate development driven infrastructure could make sense between other city pairs. To me it seems like a private project could outcompete the very long-term plans for publicly-funded trains between Phoenix and Tuscon or between San Antonio and Austin, for example. But there’s really nowhere with the ridiculous real estate markets and excess rail capacity and steady high population density of Florida.
friendly remonger that private transportation routes pay off not in tolls but in raising the value of newly connected land
(you can see this with the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and commuter railroads in [aristo-held] 19th cen. London, and most initial American rapid transit, the LA streetcars are a great example cause transportation eras were compressed there)
I mean this seems obvious - oil pipelines exist for the benefit of one field, coal/ore spurs clearly exist for one mine
Issue is how you pay for upkeep and hold off the inevitable default into public hands