Limited Government Built the Brightline—Big Government Needs to Save It

Set foot in one of Florida’s Brightline rail stations, like the one located in downtown Fort Lauderdale, and you will be greeted by a host of dazzling amenities. A seamless self-check-in is followed by a streamlined security screening. Couches with integrated charging outlets overlook the station tracks with views of the city’s affluent skyline and poverty-stricken neighborhoods. A small stand serves wine and other spirits to customers amid the resplendent Brightline yellow that colors the surrounding walls. Once onboard, the journey itself is a dream: economy seats are comfortable and spacious, and the irritation of dealing with an army of roadside “Florida men” evanesces.

The Brightline stands as a testament to limited government in the booming, GOP-dominated Sunshine State. Unlike Democratic California’s publicly owned (and still unfinished) high-speed rail between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the privately owned Brightline took just four years to begin operations in 2018 between Miami and West Palm Beach. And despite setbacks from the pandemic, the train’s much-touted expansion to Orlando International Airport began servicing passengers in September 2023. Plans are currently on the books for a phase three expansion to Tampa, FL, with Brightline West also set to begin operations between Las Vegas, NV, and Los Angeles, CA, in 2028. Writing in City Journal, the Manhattan Institute’s Jon Hartley urged other states to follow in the trains’ example of private infrastructure.

There’s just one problem: the Brightline is veering into bankruptcy.

In 2024, the train suffered a half-billion-dollar loss as ridership failed to meet expectations; in May, Fitch downgraded some of Brightline’s bonds to junk status. The reality is that the train is impractical and beyond the means of far too many Floridians. I myself had yet to use the locomotive marvel prior to writing this article, despite living just a 20-minute drive from the nearest station.

Exalting as the lack of traffic-induced stress may be, the Brightline is no faster than driving from any of its stations to Orlando. My journey on the train from Fort Lauderdale totaled three hours, the same time it would take to drive from my suburban condo in nearby Plantation to the semi-autonomous domain of “The Mouse.” Technically, the Brightline is a “higher-speed” rail, given a maximum velocity of 125 miles per hour versus the 155 mph standard of proper high-speed rail, such as Japan’s Tokaido Shinkansen.

Then there’s the issue of the train’s considerable expense. One-way economy fares to Orlando from Miami average around $70, though various flash sales and readily available promo codes can reduce the price anywhere from 15 to 50 percent, and a worthwhile 50 percent discount is offered to groups of three or more. Add to this a pre-purchased parking rate of $12 per day at Brightline stations, and it’s hard to compete with the roughly $50 roundtrip cost of tolls and gas via five-seat sedan.

In my reporting, I encountered a clear class divide between higher- and middle-income passengers. A substantial share of the riders I spoke with were corporate managers, fintech workers, and affluent international visitors, none of whom expressed reservations about the train’s expense. When I asked Helena, a well-to-do businesswoman from Brazil, whether she felt satisfied with the price of roundtrip fares, she explained that the train was far cheaper than Ubering from Orlando to Miami and gushed at the amenities offered on board.

Middle-income passengers, conversely, voiced concerns with fare prices and were more likely to have used a promo code, though some felt that the premium was justified given the additional comfort. A pair of working-class tourists from Texas told me that the train was a godsend given a lack of direct flights to Orlando from their nearest airport. At the same time, they also made clear that the cost of fares was far too expensive and only barely edged out a car rental. Alicia, a social worker visiting Miami for a work event, told me she enjoyed riding the train but did so only because her employer declined to pay for a rental car. None of the passengers I spoke with qualified as lower income.

The Brightline may be the most practical option for middle-income and affluent commuters in South Florida, particularly those who live near train stations in West Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Aventura, and Miami. Congestion between Miami and West Palm Beach can be nearly two hours at rush hour, whereas the Brightline reduces the time of a regular commute to one hour and fifteen minutes. Of course, purely on cost, the Brightline can’t compete with Amtrak or South Florida’s Tri-Rail.

The train also poses significant ambient tradeoffs, most notably from its considerable death toll. More than 180 people have met their end on Brightline tracks since 2017, making it the deadliest train in the country per million miles traveled. Even more disturbing is that most fatalities are arguably an idiosyncrasy of the state’s libertine, masochistic culture. Subsequent investigations have rarely found train conductors to be at fault, pointing instead to suicides as well as drivers attempting to beat trains at crossings. National Public Radio’s WRLN found that 41 percent of deaths since 2017 were suicides, though it neglected to provide a breakdown of the remaining fatalities. Much of the blame lies with both local and state governments, but Brightline itself has also been reluctant to spend resources on safety infrastructure due to its financial woes.

Until recently, trains were encouraged by municipal governments not to blare horns at crossings to reduce noise pollution. Ironically, the Brightline’s “higher-speed” (as opposed to “high-speed”) capability has also contributed to its lethality. Trains traveling above 125 mph are subject to mandatory safeguards requiring that tracks be separated from roads and have no traffic crossings. By keeping its speeds under 125 mph, Brightline is allowed to run at street level without fencing or separation from pedestrians and cars. Thus, barriers preventing illegal crossings are sparse. In the long run, it’s in the interest of all parties for safety standards to be improved throughout the route.

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Since the 1980s, a plethora of both public and public-private ventures made concerted but failed attempts at providing rail service comparable to the Brightline between South Florida and Orlando. In each case, the central sticking point was a fear that failure would come at the expense of state and national budgets. To remedy this, the Brightline resorted to creative financial engineering via private activity bonds (PABs).

PABs are private bonds granted tax-exempt status on the grounds that their use will benefit the public interest. In the case of commercial infrastructure, PABs have enabled a range of projects straddling public and private—with mixed results.

On the comparatively private side, the CenterPoint Intermodal Center—the country’s largest inland port in Greater Chicago—was built with around $225 million in PABs. The port is fully owned by CenterPoint Properties, but in the eyes of the federal government, lost tax revenue was offset by the improvements to the country’s transportation infrastructure.

In nearby Indiana, officials hired a consortium that would not only upgrade an existing state highway but also operate it as part of Interstate 69. The consortium, known as I-69 Development Partners (IDP), issued $244 million in PABs to finance the construction. For the average Indianian or interstate visitor, the highway is indistinguishable from any other kind of public infrastructure and conspicuously toll-free.

Sadly, mismanagement from IDP led to massive cost overruns that made it clear the consortium would not be able to pay back its bondholders. In contrast to low-interest public bonds backed by the U.S. government, private bonds tend to see higher interest rates, particularly when their issuer is seen as lacking market confidence. IDP’s inability to pay back its loans risked more expensive public-private partnerships in Indiana, given the hit to the state government’s business reputation. Consequently, Indiana assumed control over the project and has since paid tens of millions a year of so-called “availability payments” to IDP at taxpayers’ expense.

For the moment, the Brightline sits somewhere in the middle of the aforementioned examples. The train is privately owned by Florida East Coast Industries, which itself is owned by the Grupo México conglomerate. It could not have been possible, however, without public-sector support. Brightline financed its existing construction through $5 billion in PABs—far more than the CenterPoint or IDP projects—making the train’s tax exemptions functionally equivalent to a government grant.

While abundance critics are right to criticize cumbersome environmental regulations and interest group chokepoints, recent failures with large-scale infrastructure projects such as California’s high-speed rail boil down to a lack of political will and corresponding funding. As Alex Bronzini-Vender recently noted in American Affairs:

California voters approved an issuance of $9.95 billion in state bonds in 2008. Typically, as is the case with highway projects, federal funds match or exceed state appropriations, an assumption which the California High‑Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) reasonably made. That federal cash, however, did not arrive until  2012, when CHSRA received just $3.5  billion under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. By June 2013, CHSRA had, at long last, appropriated enough money to issue its first major construction contract. It would take another year to secure its only ongoing funding source: 15 percent of the revenue from the state’s cap‑and‑trade carbon auctions. With funding finally in place, CHSRA issued its next three contracts across 2015 and 2016. The delay in appropriating funding and contract issuance, however, persistently interrupted construction and forced CHSRA to constantly revise its plans while delaying work accordingly.

Given the fluctuating nature of carbon auctions, moreover, CHSRA‘s ongoing funding fluctuated significantly by year—and as such, could be neither planned for nor borrowed against…It is standard practice in much of the world and, indeed, in much of the United States, to line up funding for the construction of high‑speed rail before the project begins. CHSRA did not. The trickle of funding delayed the project, empowering critics to deny it funding, further delaying progress. Governor Gavin Newsom, elected in 2018, was among these critics, publicly dismissing the project’s viability and slashing funding for geological surveys. If CHSRA has an original sin, it has been the state and federal governments’ refusal to properly fund the project. It has certainly faced great regulatory barriers. But these challenges, however significant, are also faced by projects for new bridges and highway projects, which do manage to routinely overcome them.

It took CHSRA four times as long as Brightline West to raise $12 billion on hand, including the $3 billion it received from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. And while it’s tempting to attribute Brightline East’s drastically lower cost to Florida’s more favorable regulatory environment, it’s worth noting that the state also has a more favorable physical geography, and the service runs a fraction of CHSRA. And unlike its eastern counterpart, Brightline West is expected to hit a top speed of 200 mph. Moreover, earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that the West project’s total cost is expected to balloon to $21.5 billion, though it remains the only high-speed rail that enjoys the backing of the Trump administration. Clearly, high-speed rail’s considerable expense is by no means limited to public ventures.

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The operational success of the Brightline rests almost entirely on the (misleading) perception that private infrastructure funded via PABs comes at no risk to the taxpayer. Peruse the train’s fundamentals, however, and the picture is stunningly bleak. In 2024, annual ridership on the Brightline rose from the year prior by over 700,000 to hit 2.75 million. But—despite two years of offering services between Orlando and Miami—current projections suggest that the train will barely exceed three million riders in 2025.

While these figures are respectable, they come nowhere near covering the train’s $549 million net loss in 2024. Though it brought in $188 million, operating costs totaled $341 million. Brightline also paid $218 million to refinance its outstanding debt to $4.6 billion. And, like the section of I-69 in Indiana, interest payments rose to $178 million as confidence in the train’s profit potential has fallen. Assuming interest payments remain stable, ridership would need to at least double for Brightline to break even—a tall order considering the firm is so strained it has yet to raise the needed funds for its expansion to Tampa.

The reality is that passenger rail needs the steady hand of U.S. taxpayer dollars to survive long-term. If and when the state intervenes to save the Brightline, a host of common-sense measures would go a long way to tip the scales towards profitability. Upgrading existing tracks for increased speeds would make the train a more compelling option for long-distance travel given the prevalence of car ownership in Florida (and, paradoxically, could improve rail safety).

Subsidizing fares would similarly boost ridership by making the train more accessible to middle- and working-class Floridians. Here, a $94 million subsidy representing half of the train’s yearly revenue could halve fares at a small cost to Florida’s $117 billion budget, which currently holds a surplus of almost $4 billion. Whether or not either government intervention will ultimately materialize in limited-government Florida remains to be seen. The sad constant of passenger rail in the U.S. is a lack of political will from policymakers. In April, the Trump administration terminated a $64 million grant for high-speed rail between Houston and Dallas.

In an ideal world, a public and high-speed variant of the Brightline would be unburdened by the fickle and crippling interest rates of PABs and far closer to achieving profitability. Upon doing so, the service would then subsidize Amtrak’s less transited Southeastern routes in the same way as the Northeast Corridor. Like most roads, this scenario would rest on an assumption that passenger rail is not a business but a public service, meaning policymakers would accept risks of unprofitability for the good of broader connectivity.

It should also be noted that the drastically higher cost of high-speed rail in the U.S. relative to many European and East Asian countries largely boils down to a lack of long-term investment, standardization, and institutional knowledge within the industry. Considering that Amtrak’s Acela is the only service currently in operation that qualifies as high-speed rail, it stands to reason that the cost of novel efforts towards developing the sector will substantially overrun those of international peers.

Until such time as America musters the same gusto for long-term investment as Japan or China, private ventures like the Brightline are likely to represent the public’s best hope for passenger rail for the foreseeable future.

Juan David Rojas is a South Florida-based writer specializing in U.S. and Latin American politics. He is a frequent contributor to Compact, UnHerd, and American Affairs.