From the day it broke ground in September 2019 to its grand opening exactly four years later, the Brightline passenger railroad’s 170-mile extension from West Palm Beach to Orlando has been a novel, even audacious undertaking.

Begun just one year after the nation’s first privately developed intercity passenger railroad in more than a century began operations with three South Florida stations, the estimated $6-billion expansion aimed to provide an efficient, environmentally sound connection between two of the Sunshine State’s major urban areas and tourist destinations.

Yet the unique nature of the extension, particularly one capable of supporting high-speed trains, brought with it complexities for which there were few precedents, according to Brightline Holdings CEO Mike Reininger.

“Having to come up with solutions and ways to do things that had not been done previously—rather than copy/paste as an approach to doing things—there was a bit of that for sure,” Reininger says.

Nowhere was that challenge more evident than the 38-mile East-West Connector between Cocoa and Orlando International Airport. Unlike the expansion program’s 129-mile coast-hugging section that largely upgraded existing railroad infrastructure for 110-mph trains, the East-West Connector, which was named ENR Southeast’s Project of the Year, was a greenfield, grade-separated Class 7 rail project integrated into the corridor of the SR 528/Martin B. Anderson Beachline Expressway. Capable of handling train speeds of up to 125 mph with no at-grade roadway crossings, the East-West Connector would require more than 32 new bridges as well as grading, drainage, installation of communication and signal systems and utility relocation.

The project team box-jacked a tunnel underneath a roadway that remained open for the entire two-week effort, a first in North America.
Photo courtesy HNTB

With an aggressive schedule coupled with a mandate to minimize traffic and airport disruptions, the development of innovative design and construction approaches coupled with close coordination among multiple regulatory and oversight agencies—including three separate entities that own and operate the expressway—would prove to be as routine to the project team as a first-day vacation sunburn.

George Gilhooley, regional office leader for HNTB Corp., the connector’s program manager and lead designer, explains that because Brightline was essentially “renting” a share of the corridor from other owners, “there was a lot of give and take on how to squeeze the railroad into the narrow, limited access right-of-way, and accommodate that highway system to make that approach work.”

The signature example of the project team’s efforts to reconcile these challenges and keep the Brightline extension on schedule was the innovative use of box-jacking to install precast tunnels at the connector’s east and west ends. To route the rail line beneath SR 528 just west of the U.S. Route 1 interchange near Cocoa, the project’s general contractor Granite Construction worked with Italy-based Petrucco, the technique’s pioneer, to push the three-segment, 51-ft by 31-ft rail tunnel totaling 356 ft beneath the highway. An anti-drag system allowed the two-week installation to proceed while keeping SR 528 open to traffic—a first for construction in North America, according to HNTB.

Granite and Petrucco also installed a two-segment box-jacked tunnel totaling 267 ft beneath Goldenrod Road, adjacent to Orlando International Airport.

The months of disruptive construction time that box-jacking cut from the connector’s schedule belies the extensive preplanning required to make it happen, says Granite project manager Allen Dronko.

“The process looks simple, but you need to design for thrust blocks, surcharge embankment and other elements to make it work,” Dronko explains, adding that the meticulous preparation paid off.

“Petrucco told us those were some of the largest slides ever, yet we got them done in a matter of days,” he says.

A 574-ft-long precast concrete “flyunder” was constructed to solve routing issues near Interstate 95.
Photo courtesy HNTB

The Way West

Beyond the Cocoa Curve, where the Brightline extension makes a 90-degree shift in direction, routing the connector back to the south side of SR 528 would provide a more direct alignment toward the Orlando airport as well as better overall geotechnical conditions for railbed construction. However, the close proximity of the nearby I-95 interchange constrained routing.

Rather than going over and through an existing interchange with a series of five bridges and massive MSE walls, the project team largely bypassed the cloverleaf with a 574-ft-long precast “flyunder” arch tunnel, constructed during a temporary realignment of the SR 528 mainline. This strategy and a slight adjustment to an interchange ramp solved the routing problem, but it separated the tunnel from the backfill supply pit. The solution was a 120-ft-long overhead conveyor erected across the SR 528 that would ultimately transfer approximately 517,000 cu yd of material. The innovation also eliminated the need for dump trucks to make hundreds of congestion-causing circuitous roundtrips through the already busy interchange.

Reininger cites the conveyor as an example of “the creativity and innovation you can do to make things more efficient and quicker. And that doesn’t happen if you don’t have really good relationships across the team.”

Another bit of creative corridor work took place at SR 528’s interchange with Narcoosee Road outside Orlando, where the connector begins its final approach toward the airport.

“A significant interchange trying to cross mainline and ramps with major bridge structures would disrupt the area,” explains Scott Dean, HNTB’s chief bridge engineer for the project. He adds that a slight change to the alignment of the interchange ramps “provided a better angle for the bridges while eliminating the need for skewed substructure elements.”

Not all the crossing’s challenges were eliminated by this change. According to HNTB, the ultimate design entailed 100-in.-deep welded steel plate girders spanning up to 137 ft and integrally framing into 122-in. welded steel box straddle pier caps spanning more than 63 ft.

The final 3.5-mile section of the extension, which threads a figurative needle of infrastructure to reach a terminus station at Orlando International Airport’s new Terminal C, was built under a separate contract by a team led by general contractor Middlesex Corp.

Roadway crossings, bridges and culverts abound along the railway, especially nearing Orlando International Airport.
Photo courtesy HNTB

Water, Water Everywhere

Water, from both below and above, was a constant nemesis for the four-year project. With much of the connector spanning wetlands, the project team worked quickly to build up embankments to avoid flooding. In September 2022, Hurricane Ian drenched the corridor with more than a foot of rain. Dean says several water crossings had up to 5 ft of flooding that remained in place for several months.

“While we were high enough off the ground in some places, in others we were still doing ground-based work that got really disrupted by all that water,” he adds.

Granite project executive David Ballard notes that the completed sections stood up to the intense rainfall with no massive failures. Another challenge was managing logistics to support the intense nature of rail construction, which Ballard says can see upward of 40,000 ft of track and hundreds of ties placed each day.

“Space gets eaten up quickly,” he says, adding that along with having the railbed cleared and ready well ahead of the track installation, “the rail, ballast and ties all need to be well coordinated and ready so you can stay productive over a long distance.”

One year into full operation, Reininger says Brightline’s Orlando service is well on its way to meeting expected ridership goals.