The first thing Brightline wants you to know about its bankruptcy is that the trains will keep running.
“BUSINESS AS USUAL,” read a message the company sent to customers after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The move followed months of discussions with bondholders, according to the Financial Times, and will give the privately operated higher-speed rail line time to borrow another $490 million as it strives to increase ridership enough to keep up with payments on $4.4 billion in debt accumulated building, expanding, and operating the railroad.
Despite the setback, trains will continue zipping between Orlando and Miami at up to 125 mph because the filing does not include Brightline Trains Florida, the division that operates the line. It also does not affect Brightline West, which is developing a run from Las Vegas to Los Angeles.
The company began offering service between Miami and West Palm Beach in 2018, then extended service to Orlando beginning in 2023. It has been held up as an example of how the private sector can bring high-speed rail to the United States, especially in regions with few transit options and little in the way of financing for them. The system saw ridership increase by 14 percent, and revenue by 17 percent, between January and August compared to the same period last year. It also is moving ahead with plans to expand service to Tampa and add a station in Cocoa.
“Brightline is a critical part of Florida’s transportation network that has changed the way people move around the state,” Patrick Goddard, CEO of Brightline Florida, said in a statement that followed Friday’s filing. “This transaction will be a catalyst for further growth in ridership and revenue.”
Brightline serves about 3.5 million people a year and generates roughly $240 million in revenue, which is less than half the ridership and one-third the income it predicted in 2024, Tim Hynes, head of Global Credit Research at Debtwire, told the Associated Press. That’s why Brightline needed to rework its debt and obtain additional financing.
Beyond its financial struggles, Brightline has faced scrutiny over its safety record. As of January, 182 people had been killed by its trains since 2018, many in collisions at crossings or involving people on the tracks. Brightline says none of the incidents were caused by train operations and points to hundreds of millions of dollars it has invested in safety improvements.
Yet Brightline’s struggles come even as it finds enthusiastic riders.
Ivan Reich enjoys rail travel and often rides Brightline for the 40-minute commute from his home in West Palm Beach to his office in Fort Lauderdale, where he practices bankruptcy law. He also uses it when he goes to Miami Heat basketball games, though he concedes that at $35 per ticket, it is too expensive for daily use. (A round-trip ride between Miami and Orlando can cost as little as $120.)
“Brightline’s literally like going to the airport and being on a plane,” he said. “It’s a luxury experience. It’s nice. It’s pleasant. It’s comfortable.” Beyond the cost of a ride, “there’s nothing to complain about.”
With Amtrak smashing ridership records and Brightline’s ridership rising, Americans appear increasingly willing to travel by rail. Brightline’s financial troubles raise a more difficult question: Who will pay to build the infrastructure needed to give more of them that option?
Brightline West is developing a 218-mile high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles suburb of Rancho Cucamonga, where passengers could connect to a commuter line for the ride into LA. The roughly $21 billion project has received a $3 billion federal grant and is seeking a $6 billion federal loan as it works to secure the financing it needs to build the line.
California’s long journey toward a high-speed rail system connecting San Francisco and Los Angeles approached the problem from the other side of the equation. It has spent nearly two decades relying on public funding and is now exploring private funding.
Jim Mathews, who leads the Rail Passengers Association, sees Chapter 11 restructuring as a beneficial move that “probably gives Brightline breathing room” to get out from under “a crushing” debt load, he told Grist in an email. Improving the company’s financial outlook will benefit passenger rail overall by ensuring more people have access to it.
That said, the government needs to play a stronger role in financing rail because the sustained investment needed to launch projects is often beyond the private sector’s means, even with public-private partnerships. “Building a railroad is very hard and very expensive,” he said. “This is a good example of why governments always have a legitimate role to play.”
Money isn’t the only challenge. Private rail operators must also integrate their systems with existing public infrastructure, said Alon Levy, a research scholar at the New York University Marron Institute. Brightline West’s decision to stop in Rancho Cucamonga rather than Los Angeles illustrates the difficulty, Levy said, because reaching the city would require greater coordination with Metrolink. Building a more integrated passenger rail network will require “top-down federal action,” they said.
Rick Harnish, who leads the High Speed Rail Alliance, argues that rail should be treated more like other forms of transportation. Airlines don’t pay to build airports, and trucking companies don’t pay to build highways. Taxpayers do, because “private capital will not invest in the kind of infrastructure you need to fund public transit,” he said.
For Harnish, rising ridership on Brightline and Amtrak suggests the demand is there. What’s missing is greater public investment in the infrastructure needed to meet it. “It’s time for both the feds and states to start investing in good, high-quality tracks,” he said.
For Brightline, the immediate challenge is keeping the trains running. The larger one — for Brightline and passenger rail in general — is figuring out who pays to build the tracks beneath them.