The line, year by year
Brightline runs about 235 miles from Miami to Orlando: 195 on the Florida East Coast Railway’s tracks up the coast to Cocoa, then 40 on its own track west to Orlando’s airport. Florida East Coast Industries announced it as All Aboard Florida in March 2012. The first trains ran between Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach on January 13, 2018, and to MiamiCentral that May; Boca Raton and Aventura opened in December 2022, and Orlando on September 22, 2023.
It carried 3,116,323 riders in 2025 and took in $214 million, by its own monthly reports, and ridership through September 2026 was up 14% on the year. A forecast prepared for the company in 2018 had it carrying 6.6 million a year between Miami and Orlando by 2023.
On September 24, 2026, 17 of Brightline’s holding companies filed for Chapter 11 in federal bankruptcy court in New Jersey, owing about $2.5 billion between them. The company that owns and runs the railroad isn’t among them, and its trains are running as before. Under an agreement with their creditors, the railroad would get $490 million of new capital; a hearing on the case’s financing is set for October 29.
Cocoa’s station is planned: the Federal Railroad Administration awarded the city up to $57.5 million for it in August, and Brightline would run it. No opening date is set; the city has talked of 2030. Brightline announced a station in downtown Stuart in March 2024, but in April 2026 the Florida East Coast Railway said it wouldn’t approve one there (Brightline called its objections without merit), and in August the federal government passed over the $69.3 million grant requested for it. Brightline has given no new date. It also holds the rights to an 84-mile extension from Orlando’s airport to Tampa, starting with stations at the Orange County Convention Center and South International Drive; the line drawn here follows I-4, as the state’s corridor map does.
It isn’t the state’s first try. Florida’s voters wrote high-speed rail into the state constitution in 2000 and took it out in 2004, and in 2011 Gov. Rick Scott turned down about $2.4 billion in federal money for a high-speed line between Tampa and Orlando.
| Station | Opened | Floor area in the half mile | Built since 2012 | County | Homes since 2012 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MiamiCentral | May 19, 2018 | 37.6 million sq ft | 42% | 17% | 8,960 |
| Aventura | December 24, 2022 | 11.5 million sq ft | 30% | 17% | 1,069 |
| Fort Lauderdale | January 13, 2018 | 29.1 million sq ft | 45% | 11% | 6,040 |
| Boca Raton | December 21, 2022 | 9.0 million sq ft | 29% | 14% | 1,468 |
| West Palm Beach | January 13, 2018 | 20.8 million sq ft | 22% | 14% | 3,486 |
| Stuart | Proposed | 3.8 million sq ft | 11% | 14% | 45 |
| Cocoa | Planned | 1.7 million sq ft | 2% | 19% | 10 |
| Orlando | September 22, 2023 | — | — | 25% | — |
Floor area is each county’s 2026 tax roll’s, for the parcels whose middle is within half a mile of the station; “built since 2012” is the share of it on parcels whose building went up in 2012 or later. The county column is the same share across the whole county. Orlando’s half mile is the airport, all of it public land, so there’s no neighborhood to measure.
Around the stations
Within half a mile of MiamiCentral, 42% of today’s floor area went up after 2012, against 17% across Miami-Dade. Around Fort Lauderdale’s station it’s 45%, against 11% across Broward: four times the county’s share. Most of it went up after the trains began: 41% of the floor area around Fort Lauderdale’s station, and 36% around MiamiCentral’s, dates from 2018 or later.
The homes show it most. Of the 40,050 homes within half a mile of the five South Florida stations, 21,023 went up after the line was announced, 52%. Around MiamiCentral it’s 8,960 of 15,515; around Fort Lauderdale’s station, 6,040 of 9,928.
Some of what rose was the railroad’s own. Florida East Coast Industries, which developed Brightline, built ParkLine Miami, 816 apartments over MiamiCentral, finished in 2020, and Park-Line Palm Beaches, 290 apartments beside the West Palm Beach station, finished in 2018. It sold both, and sold land beside the Fort Lauderdale station in 2021 and 2023.
The stations added in 2022 sit in places that had mostly built out before: half the floor area within half a mile of Aventura’s station went up between 1970 and 2004, and the half mile around Boca Raton’s is mostly houses. There the share since 2012 is 30% and 29%, still more than their counties’.
Where the next ones go
The map shows the blocks around the stations still to come as they stand. Around Cocoa’s site by SR 528, almost nothing has gone up since 2012: 2% of the floor area within half a mile, against 19% across Brevard County, most of it in houses built between the 1950s and the 1980s. Around the proposed site in downtown Stuart, 11% has, against 14% across Martin County. That’s the before picture, for anyone watching what a station does.
What the map can’t say
A building near a station didn’t necessarily go up because of it: downtown Miami and Fort Lauderdale were building before Brightline, and the counties’ shares are the comparison, not a control. The year is the tax roll’s year built for a parcel’s main building, not its certificate of occupancy, and a condo tower’s is its units’. The map is the coast today: a building torn down is gone from it, so the time-lapse shows when today’s buildings went up, not the blocks as they stood each year. Miami-Dade’s and Broward’s rolls are the preliminary 2026 rolls; the other four counties’ are final. Cocoa’s and Stuart’s stations are drawn on the track nearest the sites’ reported addresses.
