Brightline will add more daily trips to its schedule

More Brightline higherspeed passenger trains will be zipping between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach next month.

Beginning Aug. 6, there will be 16 daily round trips — up from 11 daily trains, Mondays through Fridays. The weekend schedule remains the same with eight trains on Saturdays and seven on Sundays.

The earliest train will depart West Palm Beach at 5:30 a.m. and the last train will leave Miami at 11:10 p.m. weekdays.

With more daily trains comes more frequent train horns at each crossing. Quietzone safety improvements at railroad crossings are complete in some areas and ongoing in others.

Most of the Florida East Coast Railway crossings between West Palm Beach and Boca Raton are quiet zones where engineers no longer have to blast their horns.

Railroad crossings in Broward and Miami-Dade were expected to fall silent sometime this summer, once local cities and federal authorities approve the safety upgrades.

In their pitch to investors, Brightline officials planned 16 trains each weekday and nearly 3 million annual passengers on the South Florida route by 2020. Plans included extending the service to Orlando by 2021 and Tampa next.

Introductory fares ended in June. Now, one-way tickets in the Smart Coach start at $15