Brightline has picked the Treasure Coast city of Stuart as the first additional station stop for its newly opened 170-mile extension from South Florida to Orlando, city officials said Tuesday.
In a telephone interview, Vice Mayor Campbell Rich told the South Florida Sun Sentinel that City Manager Michael Mortell received word of the selection from Brightline on Monday.
“The information has been relayed to us we have been given a station,” Rich said. “It’s a great opportunity. There are very few issues where there is broad bipartisan support and this was one of them. There is a lot of excitement.”
The Miami-based high-speed passenger railroad has not issued a statement about the project. City officials have been told to expect an announcement on March 11. A Brightline spokesman did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment on Tuesday.
“The Brightline station will actually be located right in downtown Stuart,” Rich said. “It’s a huge potential boon to the city.”
Rich said the city’s application for a station was a joint effort with Martin County. Negotiations with the railroad started a month ago, he added.
Stuart is a waterfront city with a population of 18,250 people. It prevailed in a competition among other Treasure Coast municipalities that started last October. The rail line drew several proposals from other cities including Fort Pierce, which served up two. Vero Beach, Sebastian and the rural community of Fellsmere also expressed interest.
On the day Brightline launched its inaugural train to Orlando in late September, backers of a station for Stuart appeared along the tracks with welcoming banners. Firefighters sprayed water on the train as it slowly passed through town.
Mortell himself was among those aboard the first train to Orlando International.
“We’ve always tried to work toward it,” he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel amid the fanfare at the airport station. “We’ve been trying to get their attention since they were All Aboard Florida.”
Brightline, which started operating in 2018, turned its attention to the Treasure Coast after the Orlando opening, and after it had added stations at Aventura in Miami-Dade County and Boca Raton in Palm Beach County to supplement its original stations in the downtowns of Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.
Under a settlement agreement designed to resolve litigation with Martin County, Brightline was obliged to locate a station in Martin or St. Lucie counties within five years of starting the Orlando service.
In the past, Brightline has said construction on a station along the Treasure Coast would start in 2026 and open two years later. But Rich said Tuesday the buildout would start “much sooner.”
“It’ll go quick,” he said. “These are not big complicated structures. They have a very strong idea of what they want their structures to look like. A nice added benefit for the City of Stuart is we are going to get a four-story parking garage out of it.”
The vice mayor said the city expects Brightline will bring more visitors from out of town.
“I’m always surprised how many people travel from the south of us just to hang out in the downtown over the weekend,” Rich said. “This will definitely increase that. People from Miami will come up.”
Brightline is also likely to attract Stuart-area passengers who want to go south to Miami, he added. “It’s so difficult to drive down there.”
The railroad is counting on more feeder traffic from various local transportation sources including new stations. In a recent monthly financial report to it bondholders, management said its trains carried about 2.1 million passengers in 2023. It is now projecting annual ridership of 5.5 million in 2024, down from the 7 million it forecast last September. Rising passenger numbers are critical for profitability. The company is looking to refinance some $4 billion in debt during the first half of this year.
Despite the smaller forecast, Brightline suggested it is making progress.
“We believe the swift adoption of our service by customers demonstrates the latent demand in the market for an improved mode of travel between South and Central Florida,” the company said in its report.
Although its Orlando extension is now operational, the company continues to improve the infrastructure along the north-south Florida East Coast segment of the rail line.
New drawbridge planned near Stuart
Last December, Stuart announced it had received a $130.5 million federal grant to help fund a $218 million replacement of the Florida East Coast Railway drawbridge that carries both freight and Brightline passenger trains over the nearby St. Lucie River.
The city, according to Mortell in an announcement, was the lead applicant on a joint application with Brightline and the Florida Inland Navigation District. Additional funding for the span is coming from the Florida Department of Transportation.
The new drawbridge would located west of the existing railway bridge and support double railway tracks with a 16-foot vertical clearance over the river. The clearance for marine vessels traveling beneath the current span is six feet, six inches.
