Passenger Trains > investor behind Brightline
Date: 06/16/20 10:31
investor behind Brightline
Author: ts1457

I found this article interesting:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2020/06/11/inside-a-wall-street-tycoons-plan-to-get-americans-off-the-highway---and-on-his-trains/#2e9727317a04

Inside A Wall Street Tycoon's Plan To Get Americans Off The Higfhway -- And On His Trains

Alan Ohnsman Forbes Staff
Transportation

Antoine Gara Forbes Staff
Banking & Insurance

Shouting over the noise of diners at a Mexican restaurant on the floor of a casino, buyout billionaire Wes Edens has come to Las Vegas, one of the cities least friendly to mass transit, to talk about passenger rail. “It’s not like I had Lionel train sets in my basement,” he says. “I wasn’t a train nut, but I love riding on trains. It’s my favorite form of travel.”

Even a couple months ago, that was audacious talk from the casual, sandy-haired 58-year-old who made his fortune with Fortress Investment Group and who co-owns the NBA’s top team, the Milwaukee Bucks. In a post-Covid world, as people settle in for a period of minimal travel, especially if it involves being squeezed among others, a bet on train service sounds downright crazy, especially since it comes with a $9 billion price tag.

Edens’ vision: tax-exempt bonds to create high-speed train lines linking Orlando to Miami and Las Vegas to Southern California. He sees a service modeled on the Paris-to-London Eurostar and is so confident the plan will work that he’s put more than $100 million of his own money into it. If things go right, his trains could haul nearly 20 million passengers in 2026, generate annual revenue of $1.6 billion and operating profit of almost $1 billion a year.

“Great fortunes are generally made by solving the most obvious problems,” Edens says, woven leather bracelets on his right wrist jiggling each time he lightly thumps the table. “Drive from Miami to Orlando with your family; drive from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. It’s a bad experience.”

So is the money pit known as U.S. passenger rail. Amtrak, since its creation in 1971, has consumed $52 billion of public funds and never made money. Its best year was the $30 million operating loss it reported in 2019. But inside those numbers, bloated by mandates from various members of Congress to run coast-to-coast operations in a country with little appetite for it, there’s a bright silver lining: Amtrak’s high-speed Acela service along the congested I-95 corridor between Washington, New York City and Boston earned $334 million in operating profit last year. In other words, find the right regions and passenger rail can work wonderfully.

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