New York Times on Florida High Speed and Commuter Rail

[Ocklawaha]

Absolutely commute and HrSR=REGIONAL territory and not wide open running like HSR is supposed to be, IE Cali has it right and we don't, simple as that.

Just in broad swipes take your 55,000 employees and divide by the 4 possible directions (though the lions share probably live in the Orlando Metro, which isn't even touched market wise by this thing), and you get about 13,750 daily going in each direction to and from the parks. If HSR really can attract 5% of this market, (and it won't even get close to that...maybe .50) that would mean 687.5 passengers a day each way, so calling that 688 minus around 28% to account for 5 day work weeks, so at 71% of the total on any given day and your ridership drops to about 488 a day or 178,000 (rounded) a year. Toss in the 800,000 from the airport per year (another number they'll never see) and they would actually get 978,000 annual passengers. Somewhat shy of the 3.3 million riders the first year, though the first year will probably be the strongest then ridership will tumble about 33% and stabilize.

I'm not writing this crap because I want to stop rail, hell no, I want it to work. Actually I have no problem with Disney or OIA as long as Disney is at one end of the LRT and OIA on the other, the Sligh Avenue Amtrak station has all the room in the world in the yard, but isn't exactly placed in the middle of anything... Church Street or Lynx, or Florida Hospital or Winter Park, all have EXCELLENT locations for an easy trip from any corner of the metro west along the corridor. I'd even buy into a route that took the line through the airport but not "to the airport" in other words, we'd stop at OIA on the way to downtown, metro-north, pull away from Sanford, and not look back until we blew through Titusville, if that's what they want to do.

I say Titusville because with very little effort and a wad of cash, such a line with the ability for mixed traffic - perhaps freight at night, could also serve the largest railroadless port that I know of in the States, Port Canaveral. They have been clamoring for rail for years. Sanford-Titusville would also allow the use of large parts of existing right-of-way (abandoned FEC) to both Titusville and points south as well as New Smyrna and points north thereof with a split in "historic" Maytown!

I would expect that line to serve in conjunction with the FEC route to Miami, but for the most part I would build for the Port, both freight and passenger. The FEC north to Jax is supeior in every way to the CSX line (sorry Lunican) so running from Orlando to New Smyrna and hence north to Jax would be quite fast.

The Orlando-Titusville-Miami segment would be available but short lived as a through route on my system, as I'd reopen the Plant City-Mulberry-West Lake Wales-Sebring-Okeechobee-West Palm-Miami segment as a 90-110 mph railroad. At 110 mph, it will beat TU's 200 mph train to Miami because of the short haul. We ought to draw up an article with all three of us pulling resources and create a "system map" with segment details.

OCKLAWAHA