2022: A Holiday Season Opening for a Rail Station in the Sunshine State

December 21, 2022

In southeastern Florida’s Palm Beach County, a rail station in the city of Boca Raton first went into regular service. Boca Raton station is part of Brightline, a rail route that runs between Miami and Orlando in the Sunshine State. Brightline, which was formally launched in 2018, is the only privately owned and operated intercity railroad in the United States.

Construction on Boca Raton station began on January 25, 2022. This 22,000-square-foot (2,000-square-meter) facility is located near Mizner Park, a residential, shopping, and entertainment district.

Jasmine Fernández, a reporter for the Palm Beach Post, wrote about Boca Raton station in an article published on the day of this facility’s official debut. “How about a new train station for the holidays?” she noted in that article. “That’s the question Brightline President Patrick Goddard asked dozens of cheering people standing before him at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Boca Raton Brightline station on Dec. 20, a day ahead of its opening.”

Boca Raton station is one of six stops serving Brightline. This rail route’s trains, traveling at an average speed of 69 miles (111 kilometers) per hour, typically cover the 235-mile (378-kilometer)-long line in its entirety in three hours and 25 minutes.

Photo Credit: Dtobias (licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en)

For more information on Boca Raton station, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boca_Raton_station_(Brightline)

Additional information on Brightline is available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brightline