In celebration of @GoBrightline's grand opening to @MCO, I thought I'd take a look back at Florida's high-speed rail story, and how the dream of connecting the state's biggest metro areas with fast passenger trains *finally* started coming true. 🧵
There's plenty of rail history in Florida, but the story of HSR starts in 1982, with Governor Bob Graham. That year, Graham would ride the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan. After he signed the 1984 HSR Act, two consortiums were ready to compete to build a new HSR line in Florida.
But a combination of Reagan-era legislation that blocked HSR projects from federal bonds and the state's unwillingness to provide funding support or permit Transit-Oriented Development around HSR stations led to the withdrawal of both companies & the program's collapse by 1991.
In the late 1990s, Governor Lawton Chiles was more willing to provide state support and federal attitudes had improved, leading to the Florida Overland Express project, based on the TGV. There's a great video from the era that lays out the vision of FOX: youtube.com
But by 1999, Jeb Bush was Governor, and one of his first acts was to revoke the project's state funding. Without support to back their financing arrangements, FOX dropped out. But the following year, Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment to build an HSR network.
But that didn't stop Jeb! Bush continued to oppose HSR planning until 2004, when he won a state referendum to repeal the HSR mandate, even as work had progressed with a new consortium and rolling stock development was underway, like the Acela-based, turbine-powered JetTrain.
So HSR wallowed in limbo until the Obama Administration which, after other states rejected rail projects in 2010, provided more than $2.4 billion to Republican Governor Charlie Crist to fully fund an HSR line between Tampa and Orlando, with future plans to expand to Miami.
Unlike California, Florida would largely rely on the Interstate 4 median, which had already been widened to accommodate rail in the mid 2000s. However, in most proposals this would mean slower speeds than CAHSR, with trains reaching just 168mph between Orlando and Tampa.
But even then, it was not to be. The Reason Foundation published a brief claiming that costs would escalate beyond projections and risk taxpayer funds, an argument Governor Rick Scott would adopt upon announcing that he would cancel the project and return the federal funding.
Which brings us to Brightline. Once All Aboard Florida, the project sought to use a combination of the existing Florida East Coast freight line and highway alignments proposed by FLHSR (and backed by several prior state studies) to develop passenger rail with no taxpayer risk.
Scott, after supporting a $2.4 billion plan to widen Interstate 4 in Orlando, consented to the rail project, allowing the Florida Department of Transportation to lease its right of way to Brightline, and construction began in 2019 between West Palm Beach and Orlando.
So 41 years after Bob Graham's Shinkansen ride, and after many false starts, Florida today finally gained fast passenger rail between Miami and Central Florida. And work is already underway to expand Brightline to Tampa, Jacksonville, and perhaps beyond.
Loading suggestions...