2018: “A New Dawn” Arises for a Commuter Rail System in Florida

July 30, 2018

In central Florida, daily operations began for a recently completed segment of a commuter rail system in the Orlando metropolitan area. This 17-mile (27.4-kilometer) extension of SunRail encompassed the following four new stations for the second oldest commuter rail system in the Sunshine State: Meadow Woods Station in Orange County; and Tupperware, Kissimmee, and Poinciana Stations in Osceola County.  

Kevin Spear, writing for the Orlando Sentinel, reported on the start of regular service on this extension.  “The first SunRail trains rolling from Osceola County on Monday morning produced neither mob scenes nor ghost towns,” noted Spear. “But by the time the 6:45 a.m. train from Poinciana Station had stopped in downtown Kissimmee and at the Tupperware Station in north Osceola County, there weren’t a lot of empty seats left.”

Spear further stated, “As the sun rose, it was a new dawn for the commuting lives of health workers, legal professionals, painters and city hall employees, among others.” One of these commuters was Althea Whittaker, who boarded a train at Kissimmee Station to travel to her job at a law firm in Orlando. “It’s like the first day of school,” she said. “It’s awesome.” Another one of that morning’s SunRail commuters was Rosauro Silva, a painter living in Osceola County who took a train to get to a job near Winter Park Station in Orange County. “Mas economico [More economical],” he remarked when assessing the affordability of using SunRail for his commute.

SunRail covers 61.3 miles (98.7 kilometers) altogether and serves a total of 17 stations. This system, which is managed by the Central Florida Rail Commission, had an annual ridership of 1,215,400 in 2024. (The accompanying photo of a SunRail train at Poinciana Station was taken in 2021.)

Photo Credit: DanTD (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 SunRail, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SunRail