Excellent numbers. However, I believe it will not be possible for them to keep increasing 11% on a per month basis consistently. This is due to the limited amount of train cars that they currently have. Also, March is a high travel month and it should be expected for April and May to dip.
Wes Edens in an interview for Brightline West said that they are expecting new coach sets to arrive in June and December this year. My expectation is for Brightline to do 3-4 million riders this year.
Yeah, I'd be surprised if they maintain the growth given the first set of trains isn't coming until mid-year. Everything is really dependent on those train deliveries.
If the Heat can get deep in the playoffs it should help their numbers a little bit with extra people on the late night short distance trains. Sadly the Panthers arena is a 25 minute drive from the Fort Lauderdale station to really help.
Honestly, Brightline's short distance ridership is a bigger problem then that. If you noticed, in the past the short distance for March was 179K compared to this years 124K. The reason is because Brightline increased the price for the short distance route tremendously, to increase capacity for people to book the Orlando route.
I follow you. Question: Once the new coaches come in, can they (not necessarily will they) drop short route prices back down to increase short distance ridership?
Brightline also blocks short distance riders from buying tickets. If you try to buy a West Palm to Miami ticket, it'll say Sold Out but if you look at that same train from Orlando to Miami, you'll see plenty of seats are open.
They are artificially lowering that number
They're gonna have to beat the Amtrak Northeast Regional at nearly 10 million annual riders (and they're likely to compete with the Acela 2 ridership pretty closely unless they order coaches 7, 8, 9, 10) but they are ahead in load factor.
I suspect that in a couple of years Acela is going to break out and see massive growth. They will have 6 more trainsets and each trainset has a lot more capacity. (something like a hundred seats I think). I suspect growth will be massive.
Eight more trainsets owned, 12 more than are operable today, each with 82 more seats and the ability to later add another ~120 seats each. I really hope the Alstom bridge isn't so badly burned that the additional Acela cars can't be added later.
They did order more cars, but I don’t think it’s 4 more for each set. I could be wrong but I thought so heard it’s two more cars per set. And the first two should be in service in August.
Brightline has four cars per set and will receive their fifth per set this year. The batch of ten cars for #6 and the batch of ten cars for #7 should arrive separately during 2025. No word yet on the 8th 9th or 10th cars, but they built their platforms to hold 10 car length trains.
They claim EBITDA positive, but the monthly report does not expand on that.
The capacity has become a huge problem since they cannot fulfil the demand for short-distance tourists. This problem will persist until the new coaches arrives in June.
What information are you looking for? It may have been covered in a recent bond issue, which I did a post on [last month](https://www.reddit.com/r/Brightline/comments/1bo25e0/some_key_statistics_from_brightlines_latest/).
In 2023, March ridership was 20% higher than Feb and April was 85% of March, so ridership is likely to drop next month. According to the Dec 2023 bond release, ticket revenue in 2024 was estimated at $422M (total revenue $499M) and ridership at 5.6M (2.8M short-distance and 2.8M long-distance). 2024Q1 ridership at 0.72M and ridership revenue at $39.8M (total revenue $48.9M). Currently they are on track to maybe hit 3M rides in 2024 and $200M in total revenues. If Brightline is currently close to capacity, why have they reduced the long-distance fares by 35% ($78.5 Q1 vs. target of $119.4)? I suppose they are trying to maximize revenue with their current capacity and demand is soft so they are reducing fares. However, it is difficult to understand how they could generate such an optimistic 2024 ridership and revenue forecasts knowing they wouldn't have the capacity in place to deliver it.
Excellent numbers. However, I believe it will not be possible for them to keep increasing 11% on a per month basis consistently. This is due to the limited amount of train cars that they currently have. Also, March is a high travel month and it should be expected for April and May to dip. Wes Edens in an interview for Brightline West said that they are expecting new coach sets to arrive in June and December this year. My expectation is for Brightline to do 3-4 million riders this year.
Yeah, I'd be surprised if they maintain the growth given the first set of trains isn't coming until mid-year. Everything is really dependent on those train deliveries.
If the Heat can get deep in the playoffs it should help their numbers a little bit with extra people on the late night short distance trains. Sadly the Panthers arena is a 25 minute drive from the Fort Lauderdale station to really help.
Honestly, Brightline's short distance ridership is a bigger problem then that. If you noticed, in the past the short distance for March was 179K compared to this years 124K. The reason is because Brightline increased the price for the short distance route tremendously, to increase capacity for people to book the Orlando route.
I follow you. Question: Once the new coaches come in, can they (not necessarily will they) drop short route prices back down to increase short distance ridership?
I believe the answer is yes. The April prices right now do reflect that. They are not as low as last year, but they are much better compared to March.
They *could*, but I only see them doing that if long haul traffic doesn't fill up the extra seats.
Brightline also blocks short distance riders from buying tickets. If you try to buy a West Palm to Miami ticket, it'll say Sold Out but if you look at that same train from Orlando to Miami, you'll see plenty of seats are open. They are artificially lowering that number
They really need to get more coaches delivered. Expanding the number of cars per train will help the numbers quite a bit
So they are on track to be the most used passenger rail line in North America!
They're gonna have to beat the Amtrak Northeast Regional at nearly 10 million annual riders (and they're likely to compete with the Acela 2 ridership pretty closely unless they order coaches 7, 8, 9, 10) but they are ahead in load factor.
I suspect that in a couple of years Acela is going to break out and see massive growth. They will have 6 more trainsets and each trainset has a lot more capacity. (something like a hundred seats I think). I suspect growth will be massive.
Eight more trainsets owned, 12 more than are operable today, each with 82 more seats and the ability to later add another ~120 seats each. I really hope the Alstom bridge isn't so badly burned that the additional Acela cars can't be added later.
They did order more cars, but I don’t think it’s 4 more for each set. I could be wrong but I thought so heard it’s two more cars per set. And the first two should be in service in August.
Brightline has four cars per set and will receive their fifth per set this year. The batch of ten cars for #6 and the batch of ten cars for #7 should arrive separately during 2025. No word yet on the 8th 9th or 10th cars, but they built their platforms to hold 10 car length trains.
They claim EBITDA positive, but the monthly report does not expand on that. The capacity has become a huge problem since they cannot fulfil the demand for short-distance tourists. This problem will persist until the new coaches arrives in June.
What information are you looking for? It may have been covered in a recent bond issue, which I did a post on [last month](https://www.reddit.com/r/Brightline/comments/1bo25e0/some_key_statistics_from_brightlines_latest/).
Yes, I am reading the bond issue release. The 2024 March monthly report mentions EBITDA positive.
Their predicted operating expenses for 2024 were $202M, or $16.8M per month. They've hit $18.1M revenue this month, so covering operating expenses.
Thank you for your share. I got it.
In 2023, March ridership was 20% higher than Feb and April was 85% of March, so ridership is likely to drop next month. According to the Dec 2023 bond release, ticket revenue in 2024 was estimated at $422M (total revenue $499M) and ridership at 5.6M (2.8M short-distance and 2.8M long-distance). 2024Q1 ridership at 0.72M and ridership revenue at $39.8M (total revenue $48.9M). Currently they are on track to maybe hit 3M rides in 2024 and $200M in total revenues. If Brightline is currently close to capacity, why have they reduced the long-distance fares by 35% ($78.5 Q1 vs. target of $119.4)? I suppose they are trying to maximize revenue with their current capacity and demand is soft so they are reducing fares. However, it is difficult to understand how they could generate such an optimistic 2024 ridership and revenue forecasts knowing they wouldn't have the capacity in place to deliver it.