Rumor Higher Speed Rail from MCO to Disney World

[JoeCamel]

As much as I’d like to think that’s true (and they will come down eventually), I think it’s going to be far longer than some news agencies are reporting. At least in Central Florida. Here’s why:

- Just to attempt to get closer to meeting demand, rental car (RC) companies have not been pulling any cars out of their fleets for pretty much all of 2022. This obviously means that instead of being sold off, they’ve been kept on the road. The first priority for RCs will be getting these off of the road whenever possible (aka when they can offset the ‘losses’ with new stock for manufacturers)

- All of Central Florida is already in what’s called an minimum length of rental (MLR) restriction through May at least. MLRs are used with demand is so high, that there isn’t any reason to accept short reservations (as those have a higher cost per rental since they have to be cleaned after every rental and an employee has to write more contracts vs. long term rentals where each only happens once).

- Car manufacturers are struggling to meet demand from consumers and RCs alike as they’ve had to deal with COVID shut downs last year and have had chronic computer chip shortages for the majority of the last year. On top of that, now the world’s biggest shipping lane that the majority of these chips pass through is closed indefinitely. Even if the canal opened back up today, the ripple effect of delayed shipments will be felt for months.

All of this leads me to my final statement. RCs want to have their entire pre-COVID fleet back yesterday. The demand is there and saying ‘no’ to additional business means millions in lost revenue. RCs also make a ton of their revenue from selling cars when they’re retired for the rental fleet. Manufacturers cannot supply the amount of cars needed by the RC industry or even their own dealers as they have a months long backlog. Will $300 rates (that arguably never should have been that high under price gouging laws) stay? Probably not. That said, if you’re looking for a >$50/day rental anytime soon, you’re going to be looking for a long time to come.

How do the thousands of cars they parked last year come into play? I can't think demand was enough to rotate those back into the fleet or at least all of them. They seemed to have enough cars two years ago, where are they?

 

[TransportationGuy]

How do the thousands of cars they parked last year come into play? I can't think demand was enough to rotate those back into the fleet or at least all of them. They seemed to have enough cars two years ago, where are they?

Through direct to consumer and wholesale sales, the fleet was reduced by roughly 60%.

 

[JoeCamel]

Through direct to consumer and wholesale sales, the fleet was reduced by roughly 60%.

With all the dealers screaming for used it didn't make much impact from what I saw, still have to pay a premium for a used car. As you posted the manufacturer's are struggling to get inventory out, so all the consumers are primed to buy. The rental companies maybe should have looked to their core business before selling their stock.

 

[TransportationGuy]

With all the dealers screaming for used it didn't make much impact from what I saw, still have to pay a premium for a used car. As you posted the manufacturer's are struggling to get inventory out, so all the consumers are primed to buy. The rental companies maybe should have looked to their core business before selling their stock.

The general consensus at the time was a) panic because the depreciation alone is very high on brand new cars and b) that the manufacturers would be able to fulfill the existing orders for new cars on time when the rebound happened. Had anyone felt the rebound would come on this strong this fast, I doubt the fleet would have been reduced by such a great margin. Hindsight it 20/20 (no pun intended). Now, the demand is there, it came on very very fast and the manufacturers can’t keep up.

 

[joelkfla]

How do the thousands of cars they parked last year come into play? I can't think demand was enough to rotate those back into the fleet or at least all of them. They seemed to have enough cars two years ago, where are they?

3,500 of them got burned up in a fire at Ft. Myers.

Fire near southwest Florida airport burns 3,500 rental cars

More than 3,500 rental cars were damaged or destroyed in a fire that burned near a Florida airport before being contained late Friday night.

www.fox13news.com

 

[Lilofan]

3,500 of them got burned up in a fire at Ft. Myers.

Fire near southwest Florida airport burns 3,500 rental cars

More than 3,500 rental cars were damaged or destroyed in a fire that burned near a Florida airport before being contained late Friday night.

www.fox13news.com

If this was arson I hope the bad guys get caught!

 

[Patcheslee]

If this was arson I hope the bad guys get caught!

It was ruled accidental back in August.

 

[Patcheslee]

I think that if SunRail doesn't run a shuttle service on the Brightline tracks between MCO and Disney, Brightline might. I was doing some back of the envelope calculations, and the costs of running trains every 15 minutes instead of every hour are pretty close to the plausable revenue for such a service. These costs above the cost of running hourly service include:

1. Signals to allow closer train operation
2. Trainsets to serve the extra runs
3. Fuel to run the trains
4. Staff to operate the trains
5. Maintenance costs of the trains

Item 1, signaling, is fairly inexpensive. It is even less so especially in a low complexity environment with few stations, junctions, and low intersecting train traffic such as either proposed route. The Brightline presentation to CFX on March 11 indicated that this costs approximately $80,000 with the current design (page 24).

It is not clear what the maximum frequency of service can be supported by this signaling system. But we also know that Brightline is already planning on this capability because they are actively courting SunRail to run a service that would need to utilize these additional signals. Even still, assume that a signaling system necessary to operate trains every 15 minutes is three times as expensive as what they are currently planning to build, that is still only be an extra $160,000.

Item 2, additional trainsets, is difficult to calculate, because Brightline did not release the cost of their train orders from Siemens. However, based on the information I could find online, one might expect a single trainset to cost approximately $10 million. It would take approximately 15 minutes to travel between MCO and Disney Springs, so it would require three trainsets (in addition to the trainsets that provide the baseline hourly service Brightline is currently intending to operate) in order to provide 15 minute headways on this segment. This would mean it would cost approximately $30 million extra to provide this service.

Item 3, fuel costs, can be calculated assuming a fuel efficiency of 1.1mpg (source). Brightline's preferred alternative route is 16.7 miles (source page 24). So six additional one-way train runs is 100.2 miles every hour or 110.2 gallons of diesel per hour. If diesel is $3.75/gallon, that is $6,613.20 per 16 hour day, or $2.4 million per year in additional fuel costs.

Item 4, staff, can be calculated assuming a two person train staff. The 90th percentile salary of a train conductor in Florida is $66,270 (source), while the same for a train engineer is $98,960 (source). If the fully burdened cost of this staff is three times the salary, and there are three shifts of each staff person per train (in order to allow breaks and the like), the total annual labor cost of this service would be $1.5 million.

Item 5, maintenance costs, can be estimated at $4.34 per train mile (source). This works out to be about $2.5 million per year.

In other words, for an initial capital investment of $30,165,000 and an additional labor cost of approximately $6.4 million per year, there could be a reliable, congestion-free way to get between the airport and Walt Disney World.

DME used to carry 2.3 million passengers per year (source). So if this train service with 15 minute headways could carry one quarter of the trips that DME used to carry, that would be 575,000 trips per year. Ignoring the capital costs, the break even cost at this ridership level would require a one-way ticket price of $11.13.

Is this a complete no-brainer to build at this break-even point? Not really. But it is well within the realm of having a plausible business case to build. That's for sure.

I can tell you if Brightline plans to use the Siemens Charger the diesel engine price tag is between $210-250k.(we build them at our plant and hear about the financials quarterly.)
All your source links just go to a page to create a blog account

 

[TiggerDad]

The general consensus at the time was a) panic because the depreciation alone is very high on brand new cars and b) that the manufacturers would be able to fulfill the existing orders for new cars on time when the rebound happened. Had anyone felt the rebound would come on this strong this fast, I doubt the fleet would have been reduced by such a great margin. Hindsight it 20/20 (no pun intended). Now, the demand is there, it came on very very fast and the manufacturers can’t keep up.

In addition, the rental companies needed cash.

 

[TransportationGuy]

In addition, the rental companies needed cash.

Very much so. One of the big guys went bankrupt. Another was able to use the capital to keep almost all of their full time employees paid throughout the pandemic .

 

[Twirlnhurl]

I can tell you if Brightline plans to use the Siemens Charger the diesel engine price tag is between $210-250k.(we build them at our plant and hear about the financials quarterly.)
All your source links just go to a page to create a blog account

I have edited the original post to fix the links. Generally, I was finding diesel locomotives to be in the $5-$7 million dollar range. Given that the passenger cars should be a lot less complex than the locomotives, and that a city bus costs between $250k-$500k, I thought $10 million seemed reasonable for the whole trainset. But I would definitely be interested to hear a better estimate!

 

[larryz]

And I absolutely stand by that; most American airline travelers to an American destination are getting in a taxi or Uber/Lyft (or renting a car) to take them where they want to go so that they don't have to get on a train or bus with luggage.

That'll be a big surprise to the cruise industry.

 

[UNCgolf]

That'll be a big surprise to the cruise industry.

That's a whole separate thing -- busing is often included as part of the trip; they're generally not trying to find their own transportation.

Regardless, even including all of them wouldn't affect my use of the word "most" because people flying to get on a cruise is a tiny percentage of American air travel.

 

[JoeCamel]

I can tell you if Brightline plans to use the Siemens Charger the diesel engine price tag is between $210-250k.(we build them at our plant and hear about the financials quarterly.)
All your source links just go to a page to create a blog account

Is that the complete locomotive or just the engine. Seems a bargain as Amtrak paid 850M for 75 in 2018

Amtrak power renewal: 75 Siemens Chargers for long-distance trains - Railway Age

Amtrak will acquire 75 new Siemens Charger diesel locomotives for $850 million to replace aging power in its National Network locomotive fleet.

www.railwayage.com

 

[Lem]

My pleasure. I always have to chuckle when people say "There should be train service to Disneyland!" There is, and it can be very convenient. And it's all heavily subsidized by state and local government to the tune of tens of millions of dollars per year, right down to the free shuttle bus that drives you literally to the front entrance of Disneyland.

Taking the train to Disneyland can pencil out if it's just one person going by themselves. But when you have a family of 4 or more who each need to buy $15 to $25 round trip train tickets to get there from San Diego, LA, Santa Barbara, Inland Empire, etc. then it doesn't pencil out. A family of 4 in SoCal can drive to Disneyland in a Toyota Camry getting 30 MPG much cheaper and faster than they can take the train and the free shuttle bus. Thus, no one really uses the train to go there because it's slower and more expensive per person even after the massive government subsidies to keep it all running.

But for a single person coming to Disneyland from LA or San Diego for the day, it generally pencils out nicely.

 

[Robbiem]

It’s even better when you arrive to LA by train, catch a Pacific Surfliner Train to Anaheim and then take the free (for Amtrak ticket holders) ART bus to your hotel!

If you go to Hong Kong they have a similar system. The airport express to the city connects to a free shuttle to most of the main hotels. Really simple transfer you just need to take your bags between modes. Doesn’t work for Disneyland though as its much longer by rail from the airport than it is by cab

 

[Bob Harlem]

 

[Bob Harlem]

The desire to make it go through I-Drive (Convention Center/Epic Universe station) is heating up

 

[jt04]

The desire to make it go through I-Drive (Convention Center/Epic Universe station) is heating up

Uni should seek a separate dedicated system from mco. Revive the maglev. It'd be a much shorter track now. Sea World, OCCC, and others could help with the funding. Perfect situation for private/public partnership.

IMO.

 

[JoeCamel]

Uni should seek a separate dedicated system from mco. Revive the maglev. It'd be a much shorter track now. Sea World, OCCC, and others could help with the funding. Perfect situation for private/public partnership.

IMO.

Maglev for short distance??