Florida Central Maglev: It's Time!

With Florida's High Speed Rail Maglev officially unfunded by Gov. Rick Scott, it's time to counter attack with a new workable, more practical, less costly proposal. While FHR had its sights on eventually building a state-wide Maglev system, beginning with a route from Tampa to Orlando International Airport, it might be possible to salvage the Central Florida portion of this project and terminate at Walt Disney World, instead of Tampa. A revised plan could take advantage of FHR studies and right of ways that have already been paid for and follow most of the original alignment, along the I-4 median.

Stops could include Walt Disney World, Universal Studios Florida, Downtown Orlando, and Orlando International Airport. It would take much congestion off I-4, at least much of which that could be accounted for by tourists. It should have the support and political backing of the area's most influencial corporations and govnment authorities, including Walt Disney Enterprises, Comcast-NBC-Universal, Anheuser-Busch-Sea World, Wet and Wild, the International Drive business community, Downtown Orlando businesses, Church Street Station, City of Orlando, Orange County, and the Orlando International Airport Authority. A public-private partnership consisting of those organizations could pool the funds (at least in part) to build the system, sell bonds to cover the rest, and self-impose taxes to guarantee payment of those bonds. The system is also great for business since it will bring tourists to them directly and would attract many more because of convenience and the thrill of riding it is itself an attraction! The State of Florida could always join the group in the future and extend it into Tampa (as was planned by FHR) or the Space Coast and Port Authority.

Who's in favor of organizing a movement to make this real?

this would be amazing, however, extremely expensive.

It looks like I'm not the only one thinking this! This story is dated April 2012...

http://www.wftv.com/news/news/local/magnetic-levitation-trains-could-be-coming-orange-/nNNKN/

And... http://www.bizjournals.com/orlando/...lev-project-may-be-sunrail-link.html?page=all

I'm sure a lot of the traffic on I-4 is tourists, but they're generally either on buses, renting cars or drove from home. Buses cram a lot of people into a small space, so I don't think they're a huge issue. The people who rent cars with the current setup are still going to rent cars and the people who drive from home don't use the airport, so why do they care if there's a new way to get from the airport to WDW?

The stops are so close together, will the trains even get up to speed between them? Plus, with three stops between MCO and WDW only to transfer to another method of transportation once at the WDW maglev station, I just think the Magical Express experience is better.

I once thought that the monorail was the worst form of mass transit ever invented, but I was wrong, the Maglev is.
Luckily neither one is going anywhere, no pun intended.

Quite the aggresive stance for a newbie, but I completely agree. There may be torches and pitchforks soon since there are a lot of monorail lovers here.

BTW welcome to the boards.

Thanks for the welcome.
Torches and pitchforks, that's ok, facts are the facts.

It's kind of a let down that the pro-monorail contingency hasn't brought out the torches or pitchforks and defended the second worst transportation concept.
Got out my slide-rule and was ready to do battle.
It seemed appropriate as slide-rules were used when they first designed the monorails.
Mine is encased in glass and on display. Looks as good today as it did when I got it 46 years ago.
While the monorail concept can't be defended based on sound engineering design and principles, monorails are very cool looking and that's the only reason they're still used.

I was about to yell at you, but then you said monorails are cool looking which is literally the only reason I like them.

Seriously they ride on MAGNETS.