Recently, the intercity passenger railroad company Brightline announced that they made a deal with Disney to have a train station at Disney Springs as a part of their planned Orlando to Tampa route.
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Image source: Brightline presentation at ART Educational Series - Strengthening Central Florida's Global Gateways on 12/3/2020. See a recording of the presentation here.
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Since this announcement, there has been speculation that this would allow Disney to discontinue the bus-based Disney Magical Express (DME) airport transportation service and replace it with a Brightline train service. In many forums, any discussion of this possibility has received push back from people who are concerned about perceived difficulties to riders in navigating such a system, along with questioning the costs to Disney of using such a system.
The concerns about Brightline being less convenient than DME for most domestic arrivals seems overblown to me.
As far as the quality of the passenger experience is concerned, depending on train frequency, there is no particular reason to expect a two seat train + bus ride to take longer than the current one seat bus ride, because the bus portion of the trip would use the existing Disney Springs to hotel buses (potentially at a higher frequency justified by of higher demand). Even without higher frequency bus service, the travel times for a two seat train + bus ride are likely to be shorter than the existing DME service because there would be fewer intermediate stops, higher speeds, and less impact from highway congestion.
What would be the advantage to Disney of a train + bus airport connection? In addition to a higher quality guest experience provided by smoother ride, fewer delays, and more legroom, such a system has the potential to be provided at a lower cost than a bus connection.
How could something this infrastructure-heavy possibly be more cost effective than buses?
Brightline is planning to build this train line to connect Orlando and Tampa via Disney Springs. Their internal studies apparently indicate that there is enough intercity passenger demand to justify creating such a service. In addition, it is my understanding that the new Brightline track is owned by FEC, the Florida East Coast Railroad. FEC is a freight railroad that runs along the east coast of Florida between Jacksonville and Miami.
If Brightline allowed FEC to run freight trains along the right of way between the Florida east coast and Tampa, it would allow them to compete with CSX, the other major freight rail operator in Florida for access to Orlando and Tampa. This freight service alone could go a long way to pay for the infrastructure costs of adding and maintaining this new rail line.
Additionally, the non-Disney Orlando to Tampa passenger travel demand would go a long way to justifying the costs of building this infrastructure.
Therefore, it is extremely likely that in order for Brightline to justify a passenger train service to Disney, they only need to justify the costs of paying for the marginal cost of the train sets and the labor to run the trains between the two stops. These costs could be bundled into a price to charge Disney for offering the service for free to Disney resort guests.
For Disney to save money by switching from Bus to Train transportation between the airport and the resort, I believe that the cost of a train per passenger is likely to be similar to the cost of a bus per passenger. So the main differentiator would be whether Brightline could move more people with fewer employees than Mears, the current operator of the DME buses.
To illustrate how this saves labor, let's imaging a simplified model of the current Bus Only system:
In order to provide a reasonable level of service, each of the Disney Springs to Resort buses (orange in the diagram) operates at a 20 minute headway, requiring 2 buses and 2 bus drivers who can transport up to 50 guests one way in 20 minutes. This creates a maximum capacity of 150 passengers per direction per hour.
Each of the two Airport Bus to Resort routes would operate at a 20 minute headway as well. Each bus requires 1 driver who can transport up to 50 guests one way in 60 minutes. In order to provide a reasonable level of service, the buses operate at a 20 minute headway, meaning that 6 buses and 6 bus drivers are required with a maximum capacity of 150 passengers per direction per hour
In this scenario, there are 24 buses and 24 bus drivers serving all resorts A, B, C, D, E, and F. The passenger travel time from any resort to Disney Springs averages to 30 minutes (including a 10 minute average wait). The passenger travel time to the airport averages 70 minutes (including the 10 minute average wait).
A simplified version of the Train + Bus system would have the following characteristics:
The buses between Disney Springs and all of the resorts have the same characteristics as in the Bus Only system.
The Airport Train to Disney Springs would require 1 driver who can transport up to 240 guests one way in 20 minutes. (Note that additional passenger carriages can be added to the train sets to increase capacity without increasing drivers.) In order to provide a reasonable level of service, the trains operate at a 20 minute headway, meaning that 6 trains and 6 drivers are required with a maximum capacity of 720 passengers per direction per hour.
In this scenario, there are 12 buses 6 trains and 18 bus or train drivers serving resorts A, B, C, D, E, and F. The passenger travel time from any resort to Disney Springs averages to 30 minutes (including a 10 minute average wait). The passenger travel time to the airport from any resort averages 60 minutes (including the 10 minute average wait for the train and a 10 minute average wait for the bus).
Note that bus and train schedules could be coordinated to reduce the transfer time to less than 10 minutes if needed, or that additional buses may be run between Disney Springs and each resort if ridership demand is high enough. This would lower wait times for the bus and average travel times as well. So the time savings could be increased by another 5 minutes quite easily.
I would not expect the Brightline express service between
the airport and Disney Springs to use advance reservations or advance
seat assignments. Instead, I think it is most likely that passengers
would select a seat upon arrival at the train station or that the train
would not offer assigned seating. In my experience riding trains in
Asia, seat selection for a frequent service train line is not generally
made in advance.
Guests who chose to
bring their baggage on the existing Brightline trains have a baggage
parking area in each train car, keeping it comfortably out of the way.
In summary, a two seat ride would reduce labor by 25% and reduce travel time to the airport by 15%. The train portion of the ride would also have less potential for traffic delays and would be a more comfortable ride than the bus.
Factor in the other benefits including increased visitation to Disney Springs and a higher quality experience between the airport and WDW makes Disney's side of the agreement look pretty easy to justify if the price is right.
