How much of an affect does a private high speed rail proposal such as the Brightline in Florida have on Amtrak's service and route planning for the future? I remember back around 2011 there was talk of having a section of the Silver Star split in Jacksonville to go down the FEC. About a year later, the FEC Railroad proposed the All Aboard Florida high speed service between Orlando and Miami, with trip times of 3 hours. Since the AAF proposal, I haven't heard anything regarding Silver Star service down the FEC. Did Amtrak stop its planning once the AAF proposal was announced? I'm just curious as to how much Amtrak anticipates future private high speed rail proposals when doing their own planning.
After FEC's Orlando HSR was announced, I remember reading that Amtrak was still interested in also serving FEC's east coast route. ATK would also serve the smaller towns that the HSR would bypass. Nevertheless, since I have not heard since then, I wonder if FEC or ATK has had second thoughts.
You can study new route proposals or additional service on present routes. However until the equipment needed is at least being ordered why go further ?. It will help to have a preliminary study on the shelf if and when it becomes feasible to start up more service.
I don't see any issue here. Amtrak LD trains from the Northeast will still use that corridor to access Miami, and it makes some sense to have those trains serve the 'slower-speed' stops if the sleeper passengers don't mind the destination-end stopping and starting.
I do NOT expect an Amtrak 'regional' service to be providing intermediate service along that route to 'feed' the HSR system, or to duplicate the service even between Miami and Jacksonville other than with additional capacity on LD trains. (To the extent it did, I'd expect the state of Florida to be providing "official" subsidy just as other states do for regional trains; be interesting to see how that would progress...)
The last I read on this was the expense that Amtrak wanted Florida to pay for the switch of the tracks. If I remember correctly it was in the tens of millions of dollars somewhere and the Florida State Reps I believe all went into sticker price shock.
It was Amtraks price estimate for switching carriers and building/upgrading/staffing the stations on FEC that shelved the proposal and I am not sure FEC had anything to do with the estimate.......it never reached the track capacity analysis stage where FEC got to ask for money for track improvements.
I think FEC has always been neutral on the proposal as long as there wasn't Amtrak trains interferring with theirs.......they did not seem to care about the switch. This was before the AAF proposal was made public though.
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