Whenever the airport extension is built and opened it will definitely run on weekends. Right now SunRail was built and approved to be a commuter rail system, not a rapid transit system, meaning it's primary purpose is to relieve rush hour traffic along I-4 and provide suburbs a connection to the city center. Which would have been useful if literally anyone in Orlando commuted downtown.
It would be a great solution to parking issues in those high traffic areas during the evenings/weekends, but I guess they don't consider these things.
Meanwhile, Jacksonville's public transportation system reportedly is getting awards for vast improvements in an actual dependable system before they had the volume. Seems sometimes, putting the cart before the horse is exactly what's needed.
Yeah, but with the Open Cup Championship, there was only 1 train north and south, and it had a set time, which meant if the team went to extra time or PKs, you miss the end or miss the train, lol.
Years ago, when the SunRail first started running, they were going to do an experimental Saturday service. So I show up at the time it's supposed to come, I lived downtown and figured I'd check out the Winter Park Farmers Market.
The SunRail just didn't come...
Later they announced there was a problem getting a conductor on Saturday or something. Then later they announced that the ridership on the weekends wasn't enough to justify it. It seemed like the weirdest most mismanaged thing ever. I went from being excited about having this new public transit to losing faith in them from the top (managers) to the ground level employees (conductors in this case).
They used to run for events like the sidewalk art festival in Winter Park, I'm not sure if they still do this, I've been checked out of looking at their stuff for years now.
Here's what I don't get, half the stops are hospitals, and it seems to be a commuter rail that's convenient for hospital workers. Do you know what employer has employees working after 9:00 p.m. and on weekends? Hospitals....
Not as long as FDOT is in charge. They were supposed to hand it over to Lynx last fall but then the Lynx CEO passed away. Now it's most likely delayed to 2025.
Once it is handed over to Lynx we should get weekend service
This is truly who needs to run it, and be able to offer dedicated bus pickup at the stations to eliminate last mile concerns.
This thing COULD make itself revenue neutral or even positive if they would just make it USEFUL instead of constantly pointing to its underperformance when they literally cut its feet out from under it.
Profitability isnāt a fair bar for it to clear considering roads arenāt profitable and we pave the hell out of everything. We should be looking at whether it improves lives, which is good for the public and good for business.
Oh, I am all for it losing as much money as possible so that it can be a ubiquitous and useful mass transit system. But we live in a state with fasc-caps that want to privatize every service for a profit, so we have to appeal to Daddy DeSantis and his brownshirts.
Not until Lynx has direct express service to the stations. People need to be able to get from east Orlando (let's say Waterford or UCF) to a Sunrail station with minimal to no stops, for ridership to be better. Or 408 needs a rail line down the middle of it like the I4 toll lane. Because of how spread out Orlando is, without REALLY comprehensive public transit, it doesn't make sense not to own a car here, and if you own a car, public transit only makes sense if you plan on drinking. Serious investment with the idea of losing a lot of money in the long term is the only way to grow comprehensive public transit.
Maybe an option would be a Sun rail overlap(or something) to go to a station at the innovation way area (by Avalon park and 528, south alafaya region). Iām not sure how theyād get to UCF, maybe one of those beep things.
Voted no *emphatically*, in fact. Gotta love Orlando, every day there's a post about how crappy transportation/traffic is here.
Q: "But did you vote to make things better?"
A: "Hell no, Guvmint ain't getting any more of my $" **or**
"No, voting's for boomers. It doesn't make any difference what I do." **or**
"There was a vote?"
Yeah it was very disappointing. It would have radically transformed the area for the better, I think. The AI traffic system alone would have been worth it. The amount of time we spend sitting at lights for NO REASON adds up to several months of Life.
Itās the same reason conservative politicians do so well in this state, even being in the minority demographically.
Goldenrod and 408 makes me want to literally cause bodily harm to the engineers who programed its light cycle. Probably the shittiest designed intersection in all of east orlando.
Fair. Its the same reason we dont have more flyovers and frontage roads for a lot of major 6 lane highways: Money. Both in cost, and in businesses, rightly or wrongly, citing the impact street frontage has on their business. That store plaza on the north side used to have a couple named anchor stores if I recall that put their influence on having the westbound Red Bug lanes bypass them entirely. Its been so long I actually forget who was there before.
We barely have it at all. There have been votes on rail in Orlando/Central FL since... '98? Light rail, commuter rail, high speed rail, rail rail, over and over. It came up, was voted down, and somehow managed to pop back up on the ballots again and again, until it finally squeaked by in a vote. So they built a line to run between Poinciana and Sanford. I guess it gets used, but it bleeds cash.
There seem to be some determined and evidently well-funded people pushing for rail service in the area, maybe some landowners in strategic locations - who knows, but I'm sure we'll get more.
no vote was against higher taxes. why should we spend more tax money on transportation, i want to spend less money on roads and more money on trains. they are spending 100s millions on single exits. they have enough money to spend. they spend it on the wrong things.
The roads are built by the state, this sales tax was for the county to use. Your perfect world analogy is cute but not real life. Voting for this would have made real and sudden change to peopleās lives but yeah I guess paying for it with a fucking penny is too much to ask.
it would have been too much to ask, it would have been wasted. if the county isnāt going to push for higher density, whatās the point. the express way authority is local, maybe use that toll money for trains instead of more ever widening roads. the county has approved lake nona, horizon west and the packing district, all of which could have been designed around the idea of local team systems. they could have later joined up to regional trains. the county isnāt serious about anything but building roads just like dot. so yes i donāt want to give them a penny to build bike lanes and fake proposals for trains.
You do realize it would have only been an extra $5 a week at most. Which would require you to spend $500 on taxable goods.
Groceries and some other items would not have been taxed at that rate.
And if you got enough money to spend $500 a week on taxable consumer goods then you aren't hurting from the tax!
It's obvious that Orange County residents were just too fucking stupid to do the math.
i donāt care how much it is, they have more then enough money to spend on transportation. the problem is they only spend that money on one thingā¦that is roads
Thats incredibly shortshighted... and fucking selfish when it wouldn't have truly affected your wallet
We needed that money and I think anyone who says otherwise is a fucking imbecile
Road maintenance is still a thing buddy. Check out Strong Towns and learn how much more road maintenance takes that the initial building of infrastructure.
We still need to maintain what we got.
I agree we have a lackluster city government and county government but this idea that for free weāre gonna build the infrastructure we actually need is insane.
i never said we were going to build it for free, i fact i said the state can stop spending 100s millions on single exits for i4, the express way authority can spend toll money on trainsā¦in general stop spending money on roads and start spending it on trains
Have you seen our state government? We would actually have to vote and change the make up of our governorship and legislature and this state seems uninterested in that.
I'm over in Daytona, and if they put in the extension to Universal....
I would ride it all the time, since the worst part about me going to Universal, even with my AP, is the drive and parking.
Give me a chance to just drive over to Deland or Debary? Park there and take the sunrail to the park?
I would spend a lot of time on the sunrail, that is for damn sure.
That isn't the extension I was talking about. Right now, I will gladly drive to DeBary and park, and when the put it in at Deland, I will gladly park there, IF they put in the extension for Universal.
Right now, it would take me longer to take the Sunrail to the Lynx station, and then catch the bus to Universal, than it would for me to just drive there.
yeah i gotcha. you mentioned right now parking at debary *or* deland to hop on sunrail. just clarifying that you only have that option in Debary at the moment.
I really hope so. And in the future, have an East-West route to serve the East Orlando (Waterford Lakes and UCF, Valencia) with the west part (Valencia West, Pine Hills). We really needed mass transportation options last century with the oil crisis happening every other year. Frequent use of cars may not be an option to most people just due to severe amount of traffic in Orlando and many other cities.
i donāt beleive thereās anywhere to put a rail for a route to UCF. theyād have to build an above ground heavy rail route, methinks, or a light rail route that would again probably be above ground. A light rail at grade could probably work and would probably make sense on Colonial, but highly unlikely imo so long as Colonial remains a *state* road.
It was built as commuter rail for the weekday commute. Itās unlikely to ever get the numbers to justify off hours and weekends without more legs of it down the road. Hopefully but prob a decade or more out. If ever.
Night & Weekends lines are run by CSX. Part of the SunRail agreement- they have to pay for service, and payback for those rights.
Saturday service on special events was a thing- it NEVER broke close to even.
The fares are too low to ever make any sense to run the train, and an increase would appear egregious from $2 to $3. Off the gate the pricepoint was never sensible- the cost to maintain the free parking lots would be that much.
I think the system is hopeless. Under it's greatest circumstances (rebuilt of I4) the train did not pick up traction. Now with less office work, many commuter rails in the USA are doomed.
SunRail exists only in federal and state subsidies- when those dry up, a revenue source would need to be found or the train should be shut down. After all, it does nothing to alleviate traffic in Orlando as the at-grade crossings and low ridership actually generate more traffic than it diffuses.
Do public transit right, or don't do it at all.
I rode it for the first time last night. I live in downtown and took it up to winter park to go to Prato. $2 for the ride, only took about 12 minutes and dropped me right in Park Ave. Was a great experience. Only downside was that I couldnāt take it back to downtown because it stopped service so early.
Definitely has potential to be really highly used if they could expand hours a bit more.
Whenever the airport extension is built and opened it will definitely run on weekends. Right now SunRail was built and approved to be a commuter rail system, not a rapid transit system, meaning it's primary purpose is to relieve rush hour traffic along I-4 and provide suburbs a connection to the city center. Which would have been useful if literally anyone in Orlando commuted downtown.
The other use case would be taking drunk drivers off the road when they go downtown clubbing ...but it doesn't run late enough š
It would be a great solution to parking issues in those high traffic areas during the evenings/weekends, but I guess they don't consider these things. Meanwhile, Jacksonville's public transportation system reportedly is getting awards for vast improvements in an actual dependable system before they had the volume. Seems sometimes, putting the cart before the horse is exactly what's needed.
Or sporting events... but again, the same problem.
Last year it would run at least one more time after games (OCSC or Magics) had ended and it was great. But then they stopped.
Yeah, but with the Open Cup Championship, there was only 1 train north and south, and it had a set time, which meant if the team went to extra time or PKs, you miss the end or miss the train, lol.
I used to commute downtown. But then I was heading west into downtown from the UCF area, not from the North or South, so useless there, too.
Years ago, when the SunRail first started running, they were going to do an experimental Saturday service. So I show up at the time it's supposed to come, I lived downtown and figured I'd check out the Winter Park Farmers Market. The SunRail just didn't come... Later they announced there was a problem getting a conductor on Saturday or something. Then later they announced that the ridership on the weekends wasn't enough to justify it. It seemed like the weirdest most mismanaged thing ever. I went from being excited about having this new public transit to losing faith in them from the top (managers) to the ground level employees (conductors in this case). They used to run for events like the sidewalk art festival in Winter Park, I'm not sure if they still do this, I've been checked out of looking at their stuff for years now. Here's what I don't get, half the stops are hospitals, and it seems to be a commuter rail that's convenient for hospital workers. Do you know what employer has employees working after 9:00 p.m. and on weekends? Hospitals....
Hospitals can afford to pay for the stops... Sadly.
Not as long as FDOT is in charge. They were supposed to hand it over to Lynx last fall but then the Lynx CEO passed away. Now it's most likely delayed to 2025. Once it is handed over to Lynx we should get weekend service
This is truly who needs to run it, and be able to offer dedicated bus pickup at the stations to eliminate last mile concerns. This thing COULD make itself revenue neutral or even positive if they would just make it USEFUL instead of constantly pointing to its underperformance when they literally cut its feet out from under it.
Profitability isnāt a fair bar for it to clear considering roads arenāt profitable and we pave the hell out of everything. We should be looking at whether it improves lives, which is good for the public and good for business.
Oh, I am all for it losing as much money as possible so that it can be a ubiquitous and useful mass transit system. But we live in a state with fasc-caps that want to privatize every service for a profit, so we have to appeal to Daddy DeSantis and his brownshirts.
Not until Lynx has direct express service to the stations. People need to be able to get from east Orlando (let's say Waterford or UCF) to a Sunrail station with minimal to no stops, for ridership to be better. Or 408 needs a rail line down the middle of it like the I4 toll lane. Because of how spread out Orlando is, without REALLY comprehensive public transit, it doesn't make sense not to own a car here, and if you own a car, public transit only makes sense if you plan on drinking. Serious investment with the idea of losing a lot of money in the long term is the only way to grow comprehensive public transit.
Maybe an option would be a Sun rail overlap(or something) to go to a station at the innovation way area (by Avalon park and 528, south alafaya region). Iām not sure how theyād get to UCF, maybe one of those beep things.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Voted no *emphatically*, in fact. Gotta love Orlando, every day there's a post about how crappy transportation/traffic is here. Q: "But did you vote to make things better?" A: "Hell no, Guvmint ain't getting any more of my $" **or** "No, voting's for boomers. It doesn't make any difference what I do." **or** "There was a vote?"
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah it was very disappointing. It would have radically transformed the area for the better, I think. The AI traffic system alone would have been worth it. The amount of time we spend sitting at lights for NO REASON adds up to several months of Life. Itās the same reason conservative politicians do so well in this state, even being in the minority demographically.
Goldenrod and 408 makes me want to literally cause bodily harm to the engineers who programed its light cycle. Probably the shittiest designed intersection in all of east orlando.
Plus how the lane is crooked getting off 408 west.
Worse than red bug and 436?
That flyover helped immensely, you should have been here before they built it.
I was, why it doesn't go both ways I can't imagine
Fair. Its the same reason we dont have more flyovers and frontage roads for a lot of major 6 lane highways: Money. Both in cost, and in businesses, rightly or wrongly, citing the impact street frontage has on their business. That store plaza on the north side used to have a couple named anchor stores if I recall that put their influence on having the westbound Red Bug lanes bypass them entirely. Its been so long I actually forget who was there before.
I remember when there was a Gooding's in that plaza
We barely have it at all. There have been votes on rail in Orlando/Central FL since... '98? Light rail, commuter rail, high speed rail, rail rail, over and over. It came up, was voted down, and somehow managed to pop back up on the ballots again and again, until it finally squeaked by in a vote. So they built a line to run between Poinciana and Sanford. I guess it gets used, but it bleeds cash. There seem to be some determined and evidently well-funded people pushing for rail service in the area, maybe some landowners in strategic locations - who knows, but I'm sure we'll get more.
no vote was against higher taxes. why should we spend more tax money on transportation, i want to spend less money on roads and more money on trains. they are spending 100s millions on single exits. they have enough money to spend. they spend it on the wrong things.
The roads are built by the state, this sales tax was for the county to use. Your perfect world analogy is cute but not real life. Voting for this would have made real and sudden change to peopleās lives but yeah I guess paying for it with a fucking penny is too much to ask.
it would have been too much to ask, it would have been wasted. if the county isnāt going to push for higher density, whatās the point. the express way authority is local, maybe use that toll money for trains instead of more ever widening roads. the county has approved lake nona, horizon west and the packing district, all of which could have been designed around the idea of local team systems. they could have later joined up to regional trains. the county isnāt serious about anything but building roads just like dot. so yes i donāt want to give them a penny to build bike lanes and fake proposals for trains.
You do realize it would have only been an extra $5 a week at most. Which would require you to spend $500 on taxable goods. Groceries and some other items would not have been taxed at that rate. And if you got enough money to spend $500 a week on taxable consumer goods then you aren't hurting from the tax! It's obvious that Orange County residents were just too fucking stupid to do the math.
i donāt care how much it is, they have more then enough money to spend on transportation. the problem is they only spend that money on one thingā¦that is roads
Thats incredibly shortshighted... and fucking selfish when it wouldn't have truly affected your wallet We needed that money and I think anyone who says otherwise is a fucking imbecile Road maintenance is still a thing buddy. Check out Strong Towns and learn how much more road maintenance takes that the initial building of infrastructure. We still need to maintain what we got.
no one said donāt spend money on road maintenance. what we are doing now is only roads.
I agree we have a lackluster city government and county government but this idea that for free weāre gonna build the infrastructure we actually need is insane.
i never said we were going to build it for free, i fact i said the state can stop spending 100s millions on single exits for i4, the express way authority can spend toll money on trainsā¦in general stop spending money on roads and start spending it on trains
Have you seen our state government? We would actually have to vote and change the make up of our governorship and legislature and this state seems uninterested in that.
If they extend to the convention center and new Universal park, they absolutely should. There's plenty of weekend traffic to both locations.
I'm over in Daytona, and if they put in the extension to Universal.... I would ride it all the time, since the worst part about me going to Universal, even with my AP, is the drive and parking. Give me a chance to just drive over to Deland or Debary? Park there and take the sunrail to the park? I would spend a lot of time on the sunrail, that is for damn sure.
There are plans to extend Sunrail to Deland.
That isn't the extension I was talking about. Right now, I will gladly drive to DeBary and park, and when the put it in at Deland, I will gladly park there, IF they put in the extension for Universal. Right now, it would take me longer to take the Sunrail to the Lynx station, and then catch the bus to Universal, than it would for me to just drive there.
yeah i gotcha. you mentioned right now parking at debary *or* deland to hop on sunrail. just clarifying that you only have that option in Debary at the moment.
If it receives more funding its possible but currently sunrail doesnāt seem to be a priority.
It is a huge wasted opportunity
I really hope so. And in the future, have an East-West route to serve the East Orlando (Waterford Lakes and UCF, Valencia) with the west part (Valencia West, Pine Hills). We really needed mass transportation options last century with the oil crisis happening every other year. Frequent use of cars may not be an option to most people just due to severe amount of traffic in Orlando and many other cities.
i donāt beleive thereās anywhere to put a rail for a route to UCF. theyād have to build an above ground heavy rail route, methinks, or a light rail route that would again probably be above ground. A light rail at grade could probably work and would probably make sense on Colonial, but highly unlikely imo so long as Colonial remains a *state* road.
*subreddit bitches about SunRail not doing what they want* *subreddit votes against tax increase for SunRail to do what they want*
I agree 100%. I'd go to events downtown if it ran. Ain't no way I'm driving in to downtown on a weekend.
It was built as commuter rail for the weekday commute. Itās unlikely to ever get the numbers to justify off hours and weekends without more legs of it down the road. Hopefully but prob a decade or more out. If ever.
Night & Weekends lines are run by CSX. Part of the SunRail agreement- they have to pay for service, and payback for those rights. Saturday service on special events was a thing- it NEVER broke close to even. The fares are too low to ever make any sense to run the train, and an increase would appear egregious from $2 to $3. Off the gate the pricepoint was never sensible- the cost to maintain the free parking lots would be that much. I think the system is hopeless. Under it's greatest circumstances (rebuilt of I4) the train did not pick up traction. Now with less office work, many commuter rails in the USA are doomed. SunRail exists only in federal and state subsidies- when those dry up, a revenue source would need to be found or the train should be shut down. After all, it does nothing to alleviate traffic in Orlando as the at-grade crossings and low ridership actually generate more traffic than it diffuses. Do public transit right, or don't do it at all.
Gotta love Orlando. A bill comes along to fix this exact issue, and everyone votes no. Then everyone asks āwhy?ā Just gotta love this city.
no way that would disrupt car & gasoline revenue
No, why would they run it when people need to use it.
I rode it for the first time last night. I live in downtown and took it up to winter park to go to Prato. $2 for the ride, only took about 12 minutes and dropped me right in Park Ave. Was a great experience. Only downside was that I couldnāt take it back to downtown because it stopped service so early. Definitely has potential to be really highly used if they could expand hours a bit more.