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Florida Bulldog

Will Brightline passenger train survive as counties try to choke off funding?

By Ann Henson Feltgen, FloridaBulldog.org 

A Brightline train at Fort Lauderdale station

Brightline’s promise to extend its South Florida passenger train service to Orlando is in jeopardy again after two counties asked a judge this month to rescind federal approval of All Aboard Florida’s plan to issue $1.15 billion in bonds to fund the project.

The 2015 lawsuit filed in Washington, D.C. by Indian River and Martin counties against the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Federal Railroad Administration was quietly reactivated in February after DOT gave approval last December for All Aboard Florida to issue private activity bonds.

News of the two counties’ effort to vacate federal approval for the project bonds comes as an unaudited financial statement shows Brightline suffered a $28.2 million loss in the first quarter of 2018. Brightline also reported carrying nearly 75,000 total passengers and collecting $663,667 in ticket revenue during the period.

The company commenced service between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in January and expanded service to Miami in May. A second phase would construct track from Cocoa to Orlando.

The bonds, however, appear to be pivotal for the company, especially in light of the first-quarter loss.

Case dismissed

U.S. District Court Judge Christopher R. Cooper dismissed the case after All Aboard Florida withdrew its application for the bonds on Sept. 30, 2016.

“The federal lawsuit was dismissed for mootness,” said Indian River County Attorney Dylan Reingold. “But we won the argument that the National Environmental Policy Act [NEPA] applies.

The counties’ summary judgment motion was filed July 18. The federal agencies have until Aug. 15 to answer. The judge is expected to rule on Aug. 18.

The 66-page document states that issuing the public activity bonds – tax-exempt bonds issued by governments to provide special financing benefits for qualified projects – would be illegal because the project is not eligible for the bonds and because the counties did not approve the project, as is required by the Internal Revenue Code.

According to the motion, NEPA requires the federal agencies to take a hard look at the effects of the project on public safety, its environmental impacts, noise impacts and any alternatives to avoid harm. The counties contend that none of those concerns was addressed. Further, it argues that the bonds are only supposed to be available to finance high-speed trains running 120 miles per hour or greater. All Aboard Florida’s existing trains travel up to 110 mph.

“We do not comment on active litigation,” said Brightline spokeswoman Ali Soule.

Why This Case is Important

From the get-go, discussion of All Aboard Florida’s Brightline passenger train has drawn skeptical responses. Doubters say a privately funded train just can’t make it financially without some infusion of government funding.

Indian River Commissioner Bob Solari

Indian River County Commissioner Bob Solari is one of those skeptics. After seeing Brightline’s recent financial statement and discussing it at a July 3 commission meeting, he is even more convinced that the passenger train is heading in the wrong directions and could go broke within six months.

“They only have $59,000 in unrestricted cash and their restricted cash barely equals their current liabilities,” Solari said. “It appears that they badly need the second bond issue within the next six months” to survive.

County Administrator Jason Brown added during the meeting: “If I was holding bonds, I’d be worried.”

Solari added that Brightline congratulated itself for exceeding the company’s expectations.

“I can only guess that their expectations were very low,” he said.

All Aboard Florida originally sought $1.75 billion in private activity bonds, receiving $600 million to complete Phase I in South Florida and help provide operating capital. When they tried to get the rest – $1.15 billion – the two counties sued.

All Aboard Florida President Michael Reisinger (who was later transferred to Florida East Coast Industries as executive director in 2017 and left that company in February) had stressed the importance of the private activity bonds in a 2016 letter to the DOT, calling them “the lynchpin for completing our project” and “a crucial factor in ensuring our project is financed and completed.”

The new report

The new financial report paints a different picture, most notably that it is operating at a $28-million loss.  Solari said that while operating in the red is common with startups, the train’s projected revenues in 2018 of $20 million and another $60 million in 2019 seem out of reach.

Indian River’s Reingold said the reported ridership of about 75,000 was very low compared with a ridership study conducted by the company two years ago. He added that he recently rode on the train along with about 20 other riders.

“The train holds 248 seats and [the ride I took] filled about 10 percent” of those seats, he said.

These figures represent operations for now complete Phase l. Brightline operates up to 32 passenger trains per day from Miami to West Palm Beach and back.

A Brightline spokeswoman said, “These numbers only include ridership for Brightline’s introductory service between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, which opened Jan. 12. Our projections were based on Miami being open at the same time.” The Miami station did not open until May.

She added that ridership and revenue increased 35 percent on a monthly basis from January through March. “We’ve always projected a multi-year ramp-up period.”

According to Solari, another cost is piling on All Aboard Florida. He said there is an additional  $400 million cost of complying to the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) new requirement that Class I trains and commuter passenger trains install Positive Train Control by the end of the year. This new automatic braking system, NTSB says, can save hundreds of lives lost in derailments, collisions and accidents.

All Aboard Florida declined to provide a cost for these improvements, but stated the company would absorb them.

All Aboard Florida is the brainchild of its parent company – Florida East Coast Industries – both of which are owned by Fortress Investment Group. The passenger train company incorporated in 2007. It later became All Aboard Florida, and executives approached the state with a plan to build and operate a higher-speed, privately owned railroad that would allow passengers to travel from Miami to West Palm Beach, then on to Cocoa and from there to Orlando on state-of-the-art trains known as Brightline. The company says trains will shave off at least an hour of the drive time by car and will be a fraction of the cost of flying.

Reapplying for bonds

In December 2017, after Judge Cooper found the lawsuit moot, the company reapplied for and received permission from DOT to allocate the $1.15 billion tax-exempt private activity bonds with a sales deadline of May 31, 2018. When the company didn’t make that deadline, the expiration date was extended to the end of 2018.

County Commissioner Solaris and others monitoring the project say All Aboard Florida so  far has not sold any bonds dedicated to Phase II. An All Aboard Florida spokesperson was asked to confirm that statement, but the company did not reply.

Florida East Coast Holdings Corp, which operates Florida East Coast Industries and Florida East Coast Railroad, was sold to Grupo Mexico in mid-2017, but All Aboard/Brightline officials say the sale will not affect their operations. Fortress also completed its sale to SoftBank Group in December 2017.

The company originally estimated costs for Phases I and II at $1 billion. Now those estimates exceed $3.5 billion.

All Aboard Florida appears likely to miss the end-of-the-year deadline for installing Positive Train Control safety hardware and software. An extension could give the company until 2020 to complete the work. In June, Florida East Coast Railway petitioned the NTSB on behalf of All Aboard Florida/Brightline to accept an alternative braking system. The NTSB has not yet responded.

The Brightline spokeswoman wrote in an email that the company will have Positive Train Control fully implemented when operations begin in Orlando. She added that Brightline trains now operated on Automatic Train Control, “which has all the same features as Positive Train Control,” she stated.

This is not the first time new passenger trains have been contemplated. Florida has been studying interstate railroad systems for years, in large part to take pressure off its highway and freeway system. The last attempt at developing a railroad was in 2010 when President Obama’s administration offered $2.4 billion in federal funds to build an 85-mile segment from Tampa to Orlando, with future plans of continuing service to Miami. Incoming Gov. Rick Scott nixed the project and rejected the money in early 2011.

Scott later embraced All Aboard Florida’s rail concept primarily because it would be privately funded. PolitiFact Florida rated that statement “mostly false” in 2014, saying the company had already benefited through the bonds and through state funds to build a terminal in Orlando.

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Comments

10 responses to “Will Brightline passenger train survive as counties try to choke off funding?”

  1. Gaylord Wood Avatar

    When I was a kid in the 1940s – 1950s, my family frequently took the FEC Champion from Fort Lauderdale to Jacksonville over the FEC tracks, which of course passed through the counties now trying to derail Brightline. Today’s complainers have a lot in common with people who buy homes near the airport, then complain bitterly about how the elected officials have got to ‘do something’ about the airport noise. Broward County tried to make peace with the folks south of Old Griffin Road by building a huge berm by runway 10 right, but it did not stop the complainers. Brightline could start service to Melbourne over the existing tracks tomorrow morning.

    I bought a condo in Deltona primarily because it was affordable and is ten minutes away from the SunRail station in deBary, a 50-minute, very pleasant train ride commute to Orlando. As Florida’s population grows, we have to get out of our cars and onto mass transit, we can’t pave everything.

  2. Blake Edwards Avatar

    Mr or Mrs Wood. You know there was a reason why passenger service was ended by the railroad themselves fifty years ago don’t you? NO demand is the answer. And even if Brightline to Orlando comes to fruition, it will not go to Jacksonville, it will only go to the Airport in Orlando. You know how you can quickly go to any of these towns right now? Airplanes. So are you suggesting it’s somehow more logical to drive your car to a train station, pay for parking, board a train (paying more than a plane ticket) get off at another station hours later, rent a car at your destination instead of just driving directly where you wish to go? Because if you live in Melbourne, you would have to drive to Orlando to catch a train to West Palm Beach, or if you live in Vero Beach and want to go to Orlando, you would have to drive to West Palm Beach, which is further than driving to Orlando. Oh btw, surely you know Amtrak has daily service from Miami to Orlando, and points beyond, and has free parking at its stations, yet is never full? Then there’s Uber.

  3. Blake Edwards Avatar

    And you do know why Jet Airplanes are much quieter now don’t you?

  4. Gaylord, it isn’t mass transit if it bypasses 3 of the counties that it bisects. It doesn’t do anything to take cars of the roads of the Treasure Coast. As a matter of fact it will make traffic worse in those counties. It will make those towns and villages more congested and less safe.

  5. Centredoorplugs Thornton Avatar
    Centredoorplugs Thornton

    If all the bad news is coming from a narrow minded minority making their life’s work the utter legal and physical destruction of the first private rail passenger system since at least the 1980s, it is not to be believed. Any losses at all from actually running trains for just over 2 months are nowhere near $28 mln. No one from AAF or any other stakeholder in Brightline is even mentioned in this story, just naysayers. What government programs benefit the Treasure Coast area? Note the NIMBY groups are tax exempt under 501c3.

  6. Attention NIMBYs….keep wasting your money on frivolous law suits. Wait for the day Brightline sues your counties for delays and lost revenue. Jacksonville and Tampa have been announced as stops in the future with a possible stop in Cocoa where it turns inland.

    I don’t know how to tell you this, but you are in the minority. The majority of people in the large counties, where the votes are want Brightline.

    It was meant as a intra city express service to connect the MAJOR population centers of the state. If you want rail service, start something like sunrail or Tri-Rail or shut up and quit wasting your money.

  7. James Ratterree Avatar
    James Ratterree

    For those of us who have observed this looming fiasco from the beginning,, here is the nightmare scenario…

    The train gets built under the premise of “No public money at risk. Nothing to see here folks – just move along.”

    Three to five years pass. Predictably, ridership is lower than expected and expenses are higher. The goose failed to lay the golden egg, and a shutdown/bankruptcy is on the horizon.

    A great cry arises from the few logical users of the system to keep the charade going. It sounds like this:

    Oh! Why can’t we be more like Europe?
    Oh! Think of the congestion on the highways!
    Oh! Think of all the carbon from these cars!
    Oh! Think of the Union Jobs that will be lost!

    Government – in its infinite wisdom – rises to the occasion and throws in taxpayer money to keep an economically unsound business afloat from now until infinity.

    THERE IS NO SINGLE PROFITABLE COMMUTER RAIL SERVICE IN THE USA. Zip – zero – nada.

    The passenger projections of this project are far, FAR beyond reality.

    I don’t mind FECR/Brightline losing their investment. Strictly business – took a chance – did not work out. That’s capitalism at work.

    I DO MIND the likely circumstances that will arise when another attempt to revive a dead horse is forced upon the taxpayers.

    Disclaimer: There’s a dozen or more lovely communities that are being affected by this attempt at urbanization, and I live in one of them. 32 extra trains a day run through our town. Four minutes per crossing means our gates are down for two hours per day. That means that cops and ambulances are blocked for every one of these crossings. Boat crossings will require more than four minutes. Between the toxic slime and the increased blockage of our river, things are not looking good here.

    Noise? Yes – there will be plenty of that. There’s no way to hush a 3,000 horsepower diesel electric locomotive in your neighborhood.

    Pay attention to the Bullet Train project in California. Google it. Make up your own mind. Brightline is not in the same league as California’s Mother Of All Misguided Passenger Rail, but it is still going to be a whopper.

    Bookmark this discussion and come back in August, 2021. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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