If you take Brightline expect to see some tourists from New York. The train got a great plug in yesterday’s New York Times Travel section, which told its readers that the drive from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami takes one hour. As we all know, it can take one hour, during morning rush hour for instance, but most of the time (barring any accidents) it takes considerably less time. Weekends, when I tend to go, it’s usually 30 minutes. Lately I’ve been driving down on Wednesday afternoons, sometimes around rush hour, and it’s taken me 40 minutes (using the express lanes). That is only a little longer than the train trip.
The story didn’t mention the tickets until the next to last paragraph, noting that they cost “$10 to $30 each way.” Another not untrue but misleading statement. It made it sound like, if you go for the cheapest seats, the trip is eminently affordable. When we tried to take the train to Miami one Saturday morning back in December the fare was $20 one way, which meant two roundtrip tickets would have set Hania and me back $80. I met a Brightline executive at an event a few weeks back and told him that it just didn’t make fiscal sense for us to take the train to Miami. He admitted, “We’re not for everyone.” Perhaps, in the interests of comprehensive reporting, the New York Times could have mentioned that.
