blt23

This is the type of study that makes me frustrated we do so much rail planning at the route level rather than a system level where every small route wouldn’t have to justify its own maintenance facility and spare trainset. I’m really curious what the economics would look like on additional frequencies or any options to reduce the travel time, because there’s clearly a lot of capital that needs to be invested into making any trips possible and there isn’t any evidence given that the proposed service level maximizes the return on that investment. I’d also love to know how much time is being allotted to switch ends at a seemingly stub-end station in Goldsboro.

Sen. Tillis posted about it on social media earlier today.

But mainline tracks could host local/regional/commuter trains too. If we built a new, passenger-priority, mainline double track paralleling the existing freight tracks it could easily accommodate “local” trains running every 15 minutes between uptown and the airport with a few intermediate stops, and a nonstop slot for Amtrak or Atlanta-Charlotte HSR between each pair of local trains. I’m under no illusion that it would be dramatically cheaper to build than the corresponding portion of the silver line, but if NS is truly in a cooperative mood it might be easier to develop by avoiding the need for full ROW protection/separation from freight trains that light rail requires, and the intercity component could help generate political support in other parts of the state. It wouldn’t be just about the ridership that can be gleaned from the current 5 trains, but about making plans to accommodate both local and intercity trains with only one project. If our long term vision for this corridor includes both local and intercity rail, how much are we really gaining by insisting they be developed separately?

Calendar 2019 was 50.61 million passengers; rolling 12 months through February 2020 was 51.28 million.

Their current and announced cruise growth is absolutely insane, with total passenger capacity almost doubling in 5 years from what it was just before the pandemic to 2024-25. Port Everglades' current problem (relative to Miami and Canaveral) is the strong seasonality of their cruise traffic. All three ports do great business in the winter, but then Princess, Celebrity, and Holland America send a lot of their ships to Europe for the summer leaving very little at Port Everglades. Looking at summer 2024, for example, Port Everglades' eight cruise terminals will host only five ships doing 6-7 total sailings per week. By contrast, Port Canaveral's six terminals will still have 11 ships doing 15 cruises per week and Port Miami's eight(?) terminals will have 13 ships doing 17 cruises per week, and with generally larger ship sizes too. That strong year-round passenger traffic, and thus revenue, is giving Port Canaveral and Port Miami a lot more money to spend on big projects to add and improve their cruise terminals.

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/2023/11/02/norwegian-cruise-lines-new-ship-aqua-to-set-sail-at-port-canaveral/ Last week Norwegian Cruise Line announced that their next new ship, Norwegian Aqua, will sail its inaugural season from Port Canaveral in summer 2025 before moving to New York that fall and then settling in at Miami for the winter. And on a related note, rumor is that Royal Caribbean's second Icon-class ship, Star of the Seas, will be based in Port Canaveral when it debuts in July 2025, although that official announcement is still a month away.

Airside 1 (20s gates) previously did international arrivals but that facility has not been used/staffed since Terminal C opened so now all north terminal airlines have to do international arrivals at Airside 4.

This is a misleading comparison because about half of those 42 miles are just conversion of a well used commuter line to rapid transit (light metro). So in terms of new rail transit service it's more like 20 miles for $5 billion. But that's still embarrassing for us considering it's a fully automated and grade separated metro with 2.5 minute peak headways and potential for even higher frequencies in the future.

We clearly disagree on how to interpret some of the group participation slides so I won't belabor that point but I will note that the IIJA text ordering the FRA long-distance study specified that it's basically a study of discontinued long-distance routes, and this is reflected on slide 16 of the meeting series 2 overview presentation where FRA clearly states that the study is an "assessment of routes over 750 miles" and NOT an assessment of state-supported routes or other higher frequency service. So it seems pretty apparent that the final long-distance study report/recommendations from the FRA won't include any shorter routes. The O-line route may happen someday, but all indications so far are that Raleigh-Wilmington and Asheville-Salisbury are NCDOT's top priorities beyond Charlotte-D.C., and without them strongly pushing routes forward it's hard to see much progress being made any time soon. And Charlotte-Columbia would almost certainly be a SCDOT-led project, which seems even more unlikely to happen.

Where in the long-distance study materials are you seeing a Charlotte hub? I don't see anything proposing new long-distance routes to Charlotte, nor anything advocating for shorter routes like Charlotte-Wilmington or Charlotte-Winston-Salem (which don't make sense as part of a long-distance study, anyway).

The ridership projections weren't just a couple thousand, they were 11,000-12,000 weekday riders. That's still really bad for a $3.2 billion project, but it's also about the same capital cost per rider as an $8 billion silver line for 30,000 daily riders. I don't think the FTA is saying to build 20+ mile BRT lines. I think they are saying to build BRT and BRT-lite in the places where they make sense, and don't go chasing 20+ mile transit trips until the easier and more obvious opportunities have been taken advantage of.

Correct, each pier will accommodate one jumbo or two A320/B737 family planes. And these gates are using a different pier design than the rest of the terminal which allows for the two smaller planes to have completely separate simultaneous operations. It's going to be a dedicated area to the north of the bridge, not just counters along the edge of the walkway.

Phase 2 construction is beyond the timeline/scope of the current Capital Improvement Plan and not included in the mentioned $750 million figure.

I think you're referring to CT10, not CT5. (CT5 is the northernmost cruise terminal) The last masterplan did propose adding a cruise terminal on the south side of the CT10 peninsula, but it was always going to be a difficult site to make work without starting over on CT10, and the port has just announced plans to build another parking garage for CT10 on the current surface lot so we can safely say that location won't be getting a new terminal for the foreseeable future. They have also proposed to relocate Victory Cruises and build a new terminal just west of CT3, but the plan for this next terminal is to build it on the current Bluepoints Marina site on the west end of the south side. Supposedly the marina capacity will be accommodated on a nearby parcel, but they haven't announced exactly where and how yet. A thorough look at the data doesn't back this up. Carnival, Royal, Norwegian, and MSC have all announced at least as much growth at Miami as PC, and in some cases substantially more. Miami is very much still competitive, and if it does end up being a short term game I would guess Canaveral lost given that Miami has several additional cruise terminals coming online over the next 6 years. Rail isn't going to happen. The last proposal was basically killed over environmental concerns, and those aren't going to be any different now. And with how much the cruise and space industries are growing, there is no need to drive more cargo business at the port because the previously underused spaces are already getting taken up by that growth.

That extrapolation is definitely flawed because the numbers for the first few months of 2022 were anomalously low. Jan 23 was up 31% over Jan 22, Feb 23 was up 21% over Feb 22, Mar 23 was up 15% over Mar 22, and I expect that future months will be even smaller increases. Historically Q1 has had closer to 1/4 of passengers than 2/9, so putting everything together I'm guessing 2023 ends up around 56-57 million.

I wouldn't get your hopes up for moving walkways. The going cheap wasn't just about avoiding the cost of the walkways themselves, but also about eliminating the space where they would go and reducing the corridor width, so now there isn't enough space to add them in to the existing building. I would imagine that the walking distance issue/complaints makes the phase 2 APM nonnegotiable, although that doesn't help arriving international passengers who will still be stuck with really long walks.

The name hasn't been announced yet but it is a Universal hotel and is rumored to have some sort of space theme to fit with the Epic Universe concept. There's also a second (very similar?) one that will start going up soon just to its west on the other side of the Kirkman extension.

It was never a good project anyway.

What taxes are/were Disney not paying by having Reedy Creek? And having a governor appointed board is not at all the traditional special district format - the norm is for the board to be chosen by residents or property owners within the district.

It's 4 carousels for domestic flights. There are another 4 (I think) carousels before customs for international flights. For phase 2 and beyond they will expand the terminal sideways (to the north and south) to add more baggage carousels and ticket counters parallel to these first ones.

Wouldn't it make sense to do bus lanes here since Lymmo is supposed to be extended north along this stretch?

I believe that a couple of the widebody gates will not be set up for accommodating 2 smaller aircraft. GOAA website says 20 aircraft total for phase 1.

Removing parking minimums in the CDB is good but having the only citywide reduction be for detached single family housing is not.

I'll be surprised if much happens with the Sentinel site before creative village and other obvious vacant lots are more built out. I imagine the size and somewhat unwelcoming borders are going to make urban/pedestrian friendly development a challenge.

Orange County recently posted a 1000+ page report on their transportation initiative webpage (http://www.ocfl.net/TrafficTransportation/TransportationInitiative.aspx) describing the unfunded transportation "needs" that could be covered by the proposed sales tax. Based on a quick look I'm not particularly impressed because it feels incredibly car-centric, is very noncommittal about what any given project includes, and has approximately nothing dedicated to protected cycling infrastructure.