Yeah, I was really just guessing about sudden braking due to vehicles and people on the tracks so often.
I have asked the FECRS folks many of whom currently work for FECR or are retired from it and still have connections. The impression I get is that BL or FECR do Emergency Braking only at points where they are about to hit something big. They do not emergency brake in general for small things that will not cause any harm to the train because emergency braking is risky involving a certain risk of derailment. Siemens' ABS does no always work as advertised for various reasons and that could cause a flat, even when no emergency braking is involved. An Emergency Braking caused flat will often require taking the set out of service until fixed because they do not meet FRA requirements for wheel profile anymore.
I'm also not sure about the funding of the original three stations.
They were funded as part of the project by BL. No external funding, beyond the tax free municipal bonds.
Port Miami was dropped as the first new station, on a spur, when Miami Dade withdrew support.
Don't know how much Miami Dade had to do with it. The original impetus came from the Virgin Group to connect to Virgin Cruise. When Virgin went away the station went away. It is possible that Miami-Dade had jumped on Board with Virgin, but they were not the initiator of that station.
Aventura has the fanciest mall in the county, on the border with Broward County, and was supported. The missing ped bridge is a mystery. Boca Raton in Palm Beach County was supported. The localities probably get some offset by fed grants.
I think of these stations as the first step in the whole Northeast Corridor scheme, which will involve construction of many stations funded by Miami-Dade and Broward. The difference is that only these will be served by Brightline. The others will only be served by TriRail.
Any infill stations between WPB and Cocoa seem highly likely to be dependent on a money deal. At Cocoa itself, local news reported a specific land purchase, not sure the buyer. As for the route west of MCO, I can't figure it out, Disney vs. Convention/Universal, southern wealthy neighbors vs. northern boosters, the longstanding local competition with "The Mouse," Sunrail the little railroad that could expanding north, Disney cutting shuttle service at MCO even to its massive cruise operation at Cocoa (I think?).
I certainly can't figure out what you say above.
The current situation is that all parties (except Disney, who has dropped out of the running because they wanted an exclusive station of their own and is not going to get it) have settled on the alignment called Sunshine Corridor which will be owned by the City and funded mostly by the government (federal grants is what they are dreaming about), that follows the Taft-Vineland alignment from SunRail to the Convention Center and then along I-4 to the I-Drive station across I-4 from Disney Springs. There will be a station at Universal/Convention Center significantly funded by Universal. Of course the connection from the airport to SunRail will be along the industrial spur that passes south of the airport and was used to deliver the train sets to Brightline at OIA.
Incidentally this has been discussed in some detail somewhere in this thread a while back.
The Disney (as well as Carnival and several other) Cruise Lines operates out of Port Canaveral. There is not going to be any passenger rail connection to Port Canaveral for passenger use since it is impractical and hugely expensive to build a direct link from Cocoa to Port Canaveral. It involves crossing two rivers, one of which is the Intercoastal Waterway so will require 50' clearance or a movable bridge. For the foreseeable future it will be a bus connection from the Brightline Cocoa station when it materializes, to Port Canaveral.
Incidentally a rail connection for freight is being built to the Port Canaveral Freight Terminal. It is an extension of the NASA Railway from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to the North side of Port Canaveral.
Notorious traffic on a highway with an available median on the southern side, I believe. For a while it seemed like follow-the-money, the city boosters wanted a nice train from BL for free, based on reading a pro-Convention editorial in the Sun Sentinel, but then the narrative seemed like BL looking for spare change in the couch by partnering with Sunrail as it had trouble with a bond offering and then interest rates went up. Or BL genuinely wants commuter rail connections. I'm speculating worse than a video blogger!
The segment between SunRail and I-Drive will be some sort of a public-private owned thing built in some sort of a PPP scheme with funding coming both from public and private sources as things stand at present. One thing is for sure that the original routing proposed by Brightline along SR-417 is out because the Covenant with Hunters Creek that released the easement for that road through that property prohibits such addition to the use of that easement. So either some variant of the current proposal will happen or there will be no extension from the Airport to Tampa. That is what has concentrated to attention of everyone in the fractious group who all want Tampa, but were originally unable to agree on what to do through Orlando. Now it is more of a funding issue only.
The two new infill stations do have adjacent low-level commuter platforms ready to go.
Hence my comment above regarding the relationship of these stations to the TriRail Northeast Corridor.
