Brightline quiet on price of tickets
CEO says train fares will be comparable to driving costs
Just months before it’s supposed to start running, the big mystery about Brightline’s high-speed train is still this: How much will it cost to ride?
CEO David Howard won’t say more than “comparable to the cost of driving.”
With that in mind, the Sun Sentinel decided to find out just what it costs to drive the long haul up Interstate 95 — from Miami to Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach, the sites of Brightline’s three stations.
Under the best of circumstances, the tab comes to $43.37.
Whether that’s what Brightline is figuring, noone knows. Howard said prices for individual tickets, 10-packs, weekend, weekly, monthly, annual and corporate packs would be announced shortly before service begins in the fall.
“We will announce our pricing when we launch our eCommerce website and our mobile app [to purchase tickets],” he said.
Howard has been working to get the business community on board, but he’s not using
ticket prices as bait, said Dan Lindblade, president and CEO of the Fort Lauderdale Chamber of Commerce.
“I wish I had the silver bullet answer for you, but they’re not telling me either,” he said, chuckling. “That’s probably a good thing because I’d blast it all over town.”
The Sun Sentinel determined the $43.37 cost of the trip based on the price of gasoline, miles driven, time spent, vehicle wear and tolls.
At 9 a.m. Wednesday, a Hyundai Elantra left Brightline’s Miami Central station and headed north on I-95 driving the 65-mphs peed limit and staying out of the express lanes.
It took 31minutes in moderate traffic to drive 26 miles to the Brightline train station in Fort Lauderdale. From there, it took a little more than 47 minutes in increasing traffic to drive 45 more miles to the Brightline station in West Palm Beach.
The 79-mph Brightline trains are expected to sprint between Miami and Fort Lauderdale in 30 minutes and then on to West Palm Beach in another 30 minutes while drivers sit in rush-hour or crash-delayed traffic on I-95.
With the average price of gas in Florida at $2.20 per gallon on Wednesday, and with the Elantra getting 31 miles to the gallon, the trip cost an estimated $5.03 in gasoline.
If you factor in wear and tear on the car, using the latest IRS deduction of 54 cents per mile, then it adds another $38.34 to the cost of the trip. That doesn’t include engine wear from idling in traffic, which would increase the cost.
So, the total cost estimate of this commute was $43.37 to drive the 71 miles in 1hour 18 minutes.
That’s about what Tri-Rail rider Danielle Jones expected to pay for a one-way trip on the express train.
“I’d pay an easy $50 because of the time saved,” said the 22-year-old Boca Raton resident.
But Brad Strasser, of Hillsboro Beach, said Brightline ticket prices should be comparable to the $6.90 Tri-Rail fare from West Palm Beach to Miami.
“I don’t think anybody can expect paying too much more than that, otherwise [Brightline] wouldn’t be able to compete.”
Drivers’ costs would run higher if they drove in the northbound I-95 express lanes, with tolls adding $2.50 at the time we made the trip.
If we were driving a bigger car, SUV or van in the opposite direction, it would have cost much more.
The average peak driving periods are between 6 and 9 a.m. on southbound I-95 and between 4 and 7 p.m. on northbound I-95 weekdays in Miami-Dade, according to the Florida Department of Transportation.
Miami ranked fifth out of 240 U.S. cities and 11th in the world for the worst traffic congestion, according to a Washington state-based company that provides traffic data for mobile apps.
Inrix Inc. said Miami commuters wasted 65 hours and $1,762 worth of gas by sitting in traffic last year.
Brightline estimates its trains would consume nearly 2 gallons of biodiesel fuel per mile.
Biodiesel fuel, which burns cleaner than petroleum diesel, costs between $2.49 and $3.09 per gallon, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
The 67-mile, one-way trip from Miami to West Palm Beach would consume134 gallons at a minimum cost of $333.66 per trip.
If the train is full with more than 200 passengers, that costs about $1.54 per person for fuel.