So while a train from Orlando to Tampa sounds good in theory - If there is such a need for that why aren't buses (that currently do the SAME thing for really cheap - comfortable seats, usb charging ports) more popular? A train is just several buses attached together on a rail.
A quick search and I can get a bus from Tampa to Orlando (downtown to downtown) (several times a day) for about $15-19 for a 2 hour trip. There probably are bus companies that go from airport to airport. So why is a TRAIN needed? Why aren't the people who say they would take a train not using the bus?
I guess I just don't see where the demand is for trains in this country. Sure . let's find a solution to get to various points of interest quickly and cheaper than flying. But why a train that needs semi-permanent and static rails embedded into the ground??
Where to start? I-4 is probably a good place, LOL. The key to trains is that they do NOT run on highways. All train traffic is controlled and cooperative; if you have a higher priority you negotiate for the use of the rail access and pay for first dibs on the route, not like a free-for-all highway.
My DS lives in St. Pete and does not own a car. As a single guy who lives and works within a two-mile radius in a very walkable city, he doesn't need one for his daily activities. Not having to maintain a vehicle saves him an enormous amount of money, not least in insurance costs. He does have a car-share account, so if he needs to do a hardware store run or something like that, he can use a car short-term for an hourly fee. When he goes to WDW he often takes Amtrak or Megabus, so I'm very familiar with the issues of the present system.
1) Right now the intercity buses go downtown to downtown, which is useless for tourism (and also mostly useless for students, who are major users of transit.) A cheap bus from Tampa to Orlando doesn't help much if getting from WDW to the Pinellas beaches requires you to add on nearly $150 in Uber/Lyft charges RT. There is one Amtrak train per day each way on the corridor, it runs from Tampa to Kissimmee in the evening, and from Kissimmee to Tampa late morning. It's a comfortable train, and when it is on time it takes 75 minutes from downtown Tampa to Downtown Kissimmee. However, getting from Downtown St. Pete (already 20 minutes from the beaches by car) to downtown Tampa by bus takes 40 minutes and only runs 4X daily, or right now it's possible to do it by ferry, which is 30 minutes. An Uber takes 30min and costs $30 each way. Then there is a 20-minute Uber ride or a 40-minute LYNX bus ride to WDW from the Kissimmee Amtrak stop. (I've dropped him off at the Orlando Megabus stop to go back to St. Pete; driving to the only bus stop takes 45 minutes from Disney property if traffic on I-4 is decent, with the added bonus that you are adding distance in the wrong direction!)
2) I-4. The Orlando-Tampa corridor is now on the verge of becoming a single MSA (most estimate say that they will merge within 10 years), and I-4 was NOT built to handle that much traffic. These days, about the only time you can go from TPA to Universal Orlando in under 2 hours is at about 2 am. Major traffic delays happen somewhere along I-4 nearly every day, and a bus is no help to you if you are stuck in one, except that it does have a toilet on board! The I-4 Ultimate project was designed to fix traffic flow problems within Orlando; it does absolutely nothing to address congestion issues further south than Osceola County. Also, only Greyhound will get you all the way into Pinellas County, but NOT to the beaches: they take you to a bus stop on a major suburban arterial road near a shopping mall.
3) BEACHES. Did I mention the beaches? No scheduled mass transit will take you from Disney or Universal directly to a beach. A day on the sand will cost you big time right now, with the cheapest option being a weekend 24-hr car rental for about $50. But that only works if you are a licensed driver and over age 25. If not, you're looking at well over $100 to get to a real beach for a day trip.
The key to Brightline's success is making it useful for locals and attractive to tourists. Locals will ideally be able to buy passes which will lower costs for them for commuting to airports, etc, while tourists will pay full fare. THE key to getting the tourists onto the trains is connecting the Orlando I-Drive/WDW attractions to beaches, either on the West Coast or the East coast, and preferably both. (I didn't mention MCO because that is already part of the plan.) It will hugely benefit Disney's bottom line to be able to shift the bulk of the cost of the Magical Express buses onto Brightline, and serving the Disney crowd will greatly benefit Brightline's bottom line. It's a privately-owned railroad, which means that unlike a public transit utility that goes where the poorest members of the public are, Brightline will go where the largest number of paying customers want to be, and when it comes to Central Florida, that is the theme parks and the beaches. That there are other places in between that will get some service because of location is just lagniappe.
Florida Trend business magazine did a major article on Brightline last November:
https://www.floridatrend.com/article/25904/brightline-passenger-train-floridian-of-the-year (and yes, WriterGuy, it explains the real-estate profit angle.)
PS: One important distinction for this discussion. Brightline is NOT high-speed rail. It is what is known as "fast-rail", meaning it is just a bit quicker than a car, but does not require the special elevated tracks or tunnels that high-speed rail has to use in populated areas. Sticking to fast-rail speeds greatly lowers construction costs. From the FT article linked above:
Building high-speed “bullet” trains was too costly. True high-speed rail might shave 30 to 45 minutes off a 300-mile ride, but if trains travel at upward of 200 mph, they become subject to a host of regulatory and logistical considerations that make the cost exorbitant. Bullet trains, for example, need a road-free corridor or must be elevated. (One reason the California train will be so expensive is that it requires building essentially a 300-mile bridge between Los Angeles and San Francisco.)
Edens and the Florida East Coast braintrust decided the answer in Florida wasn’t high-speed rail but fast rail, with trains topping out at 79 mph in Southeast Florida and upward of 125 mph between Brevard and Orlando.
This is the entire prospectus filed with the SEC, if you are wanting to wade through it:
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1737516/000114036118043289/s002218x4_s1.htm
PPS: The irony of this entire discussion is that Florida once had an extensive rail system designed to serve both tourism and agriculture, but it was allowed to die in the early 1960's. If you are interested in the history of passenger rail in Florida, I suggest reading
Last Train to Paradise. The builders of Brightline are consciously copying a lot of the investment strategies used by Flagler and Henry Plant at the turn of the last century, and will be largely running on right of way, if not actual track, that was established by one of them.