All aboard

Introductory fares of $10 and $15 resume Monday

Brightline starts train service to Miami.

Brightline higher-speed passenger rail service officially added MiamiCentral station to its route on Saturday and every express train was sold out for the kickoff weekend. Deep discount fares of $3 and $5, system-wide, were the main reason.

Luis Guzman and eight family members caught the first train out of Miami at 9:10 a.m. for what would be a roundtrip to Fort Lauderdale.

“We wanted to test it out and see what it was all about,” he said. “We liked it. Actually, my whole family wanted to keep going up to West Palm Beach because they enjoyed the train ride so much.”

Each 4-coach, 2-engine train set can carry 240 passengers. There were up to eight round trips scheduled between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach on Saturday and Sunday.

An estimated 8,000 people were expected to ride the trains during the weekend, said Brightline President and COO Patrick Goddard.

“We actually had people asking if they could go ‘on standby,’ which was pretty wild,” he said.

Brightline could not take any walk-up customers but Goddard said that won’t be the case in the future.

“Generally speaking, if you do show up late or early we can get you on the next available train unless we

“We actually had people asking if they could go ‘on standby,’ which was pretty wild.” Patrick Goddard, Brightline president

have sold-out trains,” he said.

James and Belinda Rhodes live in Port St. Lucie so they caught the train in West Palm Beach for a ride to Fort Lauderdale and back. James Rhodes says he got the idea while sitting in his car at a railroad crossing as a Brightline train zipped past in Lake Worth.

“I’m the first in line and wham!” he said. “The train goes by and I said, ‘we got to do that.’ ”

Kevin and Allicia Walford and their two children live in Fort Lauderdale but wanted to see the new MiamiCentral station.

“I wanted to see what the Miami leg was like,” Kevin Walford said. “I purposely bought tickets on each side [of the train] because I didn’t want to see the same thing twice [out the windows].”

A weekend of festivities was scheduled at the MiamiCentral station to celebrate its grand opening and to show people farther north that Miami is not too far away.

“We like to think we’ve made their backyard bigger,” Goddard said.

Introductory fares of $10 and $15, one-way between each station, resume Monday.

“We’re going to have introductory fares for a few more weeks and we encourage people to try it out because these introductory rates are not going to last forever,” he said.

No specific date has been picked for the start of regular fares that will fluctuate depending on peak travel times daily.

MIKE STOCKER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Brightline higher-speed passenger trains started running into MiamiCentral station on Saturday, and every train was sold out for the kick-off weekend.