Saturday rail service to be tested soon
SunRail’s first regular Saturday service will be tested for four months starting Oct. 8 in an effort paid for by Central Florida businesses and organizations.
Groups such as Florida Hospital, the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts and the Downtown Development Board contributed close to $250,000 to help pay for the new trains that now run only on weekdays.
The goal, officials say, is to help Central Floridians get to several major Saturday events along the train route.
Coming up Oct. 8 is Come Out With Pride, which expects an attendance of more than 100,000, according to its website. And the Autumn Winter Park Festival is from Oct. 8-9.
Six Orlando Solar Bears games, four Orlando Magic
games and Florida State University watch parties at Wall Street Plaza downtown will occur between now and Feb. 11, when the service is scheduled to end.
“What we’re looking for is to make sure this infrastructure asset is used,” said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who also chairs SunRail’s governing board.
The commuter rail will begin operating on a Saturday schedule between 2 and 11 p.m., but hours will also be timed to best serve largescale events on those days. If an Orlando Magic game goes into double-overtime, for example, SunRail could extend its schedule that night.
Asked what could make SunRail better, Alexa Nieves, 26, said, “Weekend trains. Definitely.”
Nieves was traveling Wednesday by commuter rail back to her home in Altamonte Springs.
“I will buy another monthlong pass” when SunRail gets Saturday service, she said.
The cost for the new service is about $360,000, or about $20,000 to run every Saturday. SunRail Executive Director Nicola Liquori said the gap in funding will be partly covered by standard train ticket fees.
In the past, SunRail has offered weekend service for specific events. About 3,500 people rode SunRail on a Sunday in June to attend a vigil for Pulse nightclub victims at Lake Eola Park.
In 2015, SunRail was available on the weekend for the Winter Park Sidewalk Art Festival and had an estimated 26,000 riders each day. Winter Park’s chamber of commerce and community redevelopment agency contributed $25,000 for the new Saturday service.
SunRail’s ridership has been relatively flat since its opening in early 2014, with about 3,500 riders taking the commuter rail line a day on average this June.
“I think since the day SunRail opened, the question went from, ‘Do we need SunRail?’ to ‘How do we expand the service?’ ” Dyer said.
Starting in 2021, state funding for SunRail will end, leaving it to Orlando and Seminole, Osceola and Orange counties to pay for it.
As a result, SunRail hopes to offset expenses by increasing its ridership.
Currently, it’s expanding 17 miles south into Poinciana in Osceola County, adding four more stations that aim to be complete in 2018.
Earlier this year, SunRail’s planned expansion north to DeLand was dealt a blow when SunRail decided not to apply for a federal grant because “it wasn’t reaching the funding level or comfort level” that was needed, said Florida Department of Transportation spokesman Steve Olson.
Dyer and Liquori said the organization is still committed to expanding into DeLand.
The commuter rail is also evaluating building a line to Orlando International Airport.
“To the airport, we would have to go to a seven-day-aweek operation and more frequent service, [this Saturday service] just gives us some more experience for providing that type of service,” Dyer said.