Leaders eye SunRail’s near- and longer-term future

As workers press ahead to finish the commuter-rail connection between DeLand and the 16 other SunRail points southward, state and local leaders are looking at the prospects for SunRail, including significant expansions in and around Orlando.

An actual date for opening the DeLand SunRail depot and beginning regular weekday service has yet to be announced.

“That station will be opening this summer,” Florida Department of Transportation District 5 Secretary John Tyler promised the Central Florida Commuter Rail Commission in Orlando April 25. 

The SunRail station now underway is next to the DeLand Amtrak station, located at 2491 Old New York Ave. 

The planned opening of the DeLand depot and the beginning of weekday service from and to DeLand comes 10 years after SunRail began service at DeBary. 

The DeLand SunRail station will be the north terminus of a 61-mile-long system that links Volusia with Seminole, Orange and Osceola counties and goes through the heart of Downtown Orlando. In fact, the four counties and the City of Orlando are the five local partners in the rail venture and destined to become its owners within three years, or perhaps sooner.

Stalled for several years because of a lack of funding, the construction of the 12.2-mile segment of the original SunRail in the CSX rail corridor is the last piece of a system envisioned 25 years ago. Finally, after years of being unable to secure grants of approximately $120 million needed to finish the commuter-rail system as planned, the FDOT was able to lower the cost through a process known as value engineering. The refined and reduced capital cost became $42.8 million, and a contract for that amount was signed between the FDOT and Herzog, the prime contractor for the extension of SunRail from DeBary to DeLand, to complete the SunRail enterprise.

Under the SunRail agreements ratified by the five local governments in 2007, Volusia County had to pay 25 percent of the capital cost of extending SunRail to DeLand. The County Council borrowed $11 million from the State Infrastructure Bank to pay its share of that cost.

Will enough people ride the trains to make it worth SunRail’s total $1.5 billion-plus cost?

“We all need it to be successful,” Tyler said, referring to the addition of the DeLand service.

CFCRC Chair and Volusia County Chair Jeff Brower recalled 2007 projections of rather lean usage of SunRail from the DeLand station.

“The estimate was 200 riders a day,” he said.

“That’s an old number. That has not been updated in a while,” Tyler said. “A number of things have changed in Central Florida. We hope it’s more than that.”

Brower appealed to Tyler and the FDOT to create a promotional campaign to lure more people to try SunRail and to use it.

“As we get ready to open DeLand, … we need to see that train full,” Brower said. “Let’s get a good promotion and open it with a bang.”

SunRail’s latest average daily ridership from all 16 stations now in service is 5,294 per day. That number, though rebounding and rising above pre-pandemic levels, still falls short of the 14,000-or-so daily potential ridership mentioned when commuter-rail proponents pitched for support for the system. SunRail, its advocates said, would take thousands of cars off the overburdened Interstate 4, as workers in outlying areas would forsake the traffic congestion on the superhighway and ride the train.

Too much change too fast?

Now that the original commuter-rail vision is about to become a reality, leaders and planners are increasingly floating the possibilities of adding to SunRail, especially in Orange County. 

Even though the transition of ownership from the FDOT to the five local owners-to-be is not yet fully worked out, the future of SunRail is causing some officials and regional planners to dream and brainstorm. A key concept now under discussion is the Sunshine Corridor, which would connect Orlando International Airport and the Orange County Convention Center. Other stops may include South International Drive and Disney Springs. Included, too, is a place for Brightline, the private company that provides service between Miami and Orlando, with the additional goal of running trains westward to Tampa. Tyler said Brightline and Universal Studios have already stepped forward as partners in making the Sunshine Corridor a reality.

“Hopefully, we’ll add more to that,” Tyler said.

Tyler termed such projects “transformational, and they have significant costs.”

Those “significant costs” may be as much as $400 million to extend SunRail service from the main north-south 61-mile-long system to Orlando International Airport. Adding a rail option between OIA and the Orange County Convention Center may cost an estimated $1.75 billion to $2.4 billion, according to information shared with the CFCRC. Moreover, building a rail line as far as Disney Springs, with a stop on South International Drive, may cost as much as $2 billion more. The operating expenses vary, depending on the number of miles of tracks, frequency of service, and costs of maintenance, repairs and fuel.

In reviewing the efforts to build support for a local sales tax for transportation, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings said he had attended a number of meetings with the public on the metropolitan area’s problems of getting from place to place. Demings said his audiences readily agree Greater Orlando has transportation problems.

“When I ask, ‘How many of you are willing to help pay for the solution? That’s when it gets a bit shaky,” he told his colleagues on the commission.

Demings said it will not be possible to pay for greater transportation improvements in the fast-growing region “without a dedicated funding source.”

Demings would not rule out trying anew in 2026 to persuade his constituents to approve a 1-cent sales tax for transportation. A majority of Orange County’s voters defeated a ballot measure for a local sales tax in Orange County in 2022.

“We all need to hear from the public,” Brower said. 

Brower said he does “not know how the Volusia County Council will vote,” if asked to aid in making the Sunshine Corridor a reality. 

“We are all in agreement that there’s a lot of work ahead,” he concluded.

Admitting she is “the new kid on the block,” Seminole County Commissioner Amy Lockhart conceded “public transit will never pay for itself.” She zeroed in on the shortfalls between SunRail’s annual expenses and its revenues.

“The larger these deficits grow, the more we have to pay,” Lockhart said.

“We are not a bottomless pit of money,” she added.

One way to increase SunRail’s revenues, she suggested, may be to increase the fares for riders to attend special events, such as Magic games or art shows.

“If you increase the perceived value of something, you increase the cost of it,” Lockhart said.

Unless new ways of luring riders can be found, CFCRC members agree, anything that increases SunRail’s operating expenses — whether longer hours of service or more destinations — will likely widen the shortfalls between costs and income.

For now and the months ahead, however, local leaders aware of the phased transition of SunRail’s ownership will likely focus on those new responsibilities.

“There’s going to be a boatload of meetings,” Volusia County director of government relations John Booker said.

Money money money
SunRail now costs some $81.6 million per year to operate and maintain. The revenues for SunRail amount to about $34.2 million — leaving a deficit of more than $47 million.
Fares paid by riders account for only about $2.2 million, or about 2.5 percent of the costs.
The FDOT, which owns and operates SunRail, is now covering virtually all of the system’s expenses, as it has done since SunRail became operational in 2014.  However, the days of the state agency’s largesse and generosity are numbered. The long-awaited and phased transfer of ownership and operation of SunRail begins Jan. 1, 2025. Volusia and the other four funding partners are the future owners of SunRail, and they will own the train’s expenses and shortfalls. The responsibilities for SunRail will be shifted from the state to the locals.
“We’re not taking over operations, but we are taking over in the fiscal and financial agreement,” John Booker, Volusia County’s director of government relations, said.
The FDOT will continue to operate the trains, but the locals will start paying expenses.
The transition of SunRail’s ownership and the actual handover of SunRail to the CFCRC — meaning the five local partners — will come on Jan. 1, 2027, or maybe earlier. The FDOT’s role in SunRail will continue primarily as an aid in securing federal and state grants for the system.

Safety for Volusia?

The County Council recently voted to amend the SunRail agreements to require a unanimous vote by the CFCRC to expand service.

Under the amended arrangement, other counties or Orlando may implement night or weekend train runs, but Volusia cannot legally be forced into doing so.

The amended agreement has already been ratified by the elected governing bodies of all five local funding partners and by the CFCRC.