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Where did you read that it (the Brightline) stops in Boca Raton and Pompano Beach? I heard that it only has four stops----Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, West Palm Beach and (eventually) Orlando.



I could have sworn that I read about a station being planned right in between the two cities, but I can't find anything about it now. I wouldn't be surprised to see something like that in the future though, along with some of the cities that are heavily lobbying for stops (St Lucie/Fort Pierce, Palm Bay, Cocoa, and possibly even Jacksonville and Tampa)


It defeats the purpose of "high speed" if you can't actually get to "high speed" due to stops.

Also, this I think is more geared for tourist traffic than daily commute traffic. Orlando for the parks, West Palm Beach for the shopping (my guess), Ft. Lauderdale and Miami for the cruise ships.


> It defeats the purpose of "high speed" if you can't actually get to "high speed" due to stops.

Not in the slightest. Every successful HSR system in the world has plenty of stops in what most people would consider trivial towns. And they all regularly run on average well below their top speed because of it. Those aren't pointless stops; when put in the context of the rest of the cartesian network, they provide significant enough revenue to justify their own existence.

This is true for both HSR lines that are publicly owned as well as pure private systems like in Japan...in other words, they aren't there for political reasons. In fact, the most financially successful lines in the world happen to have the most stops in <50k population towns. If there is any political influence in the matter, it is doing the opposite and passing up stops with little political power, to their financial detriment. Like I said, the real reason for the power in HSR is acceleration, not top speed.

The only thing that defeats the purpose of HSR is when they don't make enough money to justify their existence, making them eventually go away.


In France there where major demonstrations and direct actions to try and get one of the northern TSV's to stop in their city - they wanted the tourism benefits.


Usually when they won't stop in a specific city it is either because there is another stop very close by (<30min drive), or because a stop would require a complete change of the right of way. There are plenty of LGV stops in tiny towns and suburbs...I've seen some with populations as low as 15k people.


Well, it does have to turn in Cocoa anyways, so it wouldn't slow it down too much. Cocoa's still the most inconsequential city on this list, though.

(nb - from Cocoa)




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