Brightline forms a partnership with Virgin and changes name

What's in a name?

For Brightline, not longevity.

On Friday, Brightline, the intercity passenger rail service linking Miami, Fort Lauderdale, and West Palm Beach in May, announced a strategic partnership with Virgin Group, the entertainment, transportation, and cellphone giant, which Richard created in 1970. Branson.

This partnership means that privately-funded Brightline will rename Virgin Trains USA later this month and become Virgin Trains USA brand in 2019, leveraging Virgin's worldwide reputation.

"Our private sector effort to reinvent America's passenger rail service is another leap forward with the addition of the Virgin team," said Brightline President Wes Edens in a statement. "Virgin has built a respected and trusted brand in the travel and hospitality industry. With our common goal on customer experience, fueled by a culture of innovation and disruption, we are well positioned to continue our success. "

Brightline's current management team, which includes President Patrick Goddard and Edens, co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, will continue to oversee day-to-day operations, engineering, business development and strategy.

The amount of Virgin's minority interest in Brightline has not been released. The money will be managed by the Brightline management team and the subsidiaries of Fortress Investment Group.

Branson said: "Brightline is at the forefront of innovation in this market and is the perfect partner with which Virgin will work to change perceptions and travel habits across the United States."

On Friday, Brightline also asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to become a publicly traded company.

The West Palm service in Orlando is under development, as well as an expansion goal in Tampa.

Brightline has had some difficult times since testing began in 2017. Seven people were killed on the rails, but Brightline trains were not mentioned and more than half of the deaths were classified as suicides.

Approximately 75,000 passengers in total borrowed the service and revenues of $ 663,667 were collected in the first quarter of Brightline.

"Our model is based on pairs of cities that are" too short to fly and too long to drive, "making passenger rail a viable alternative," Goddard told the Miami Herald in September. "There are about 400 million trips between Orlando and South Florida, and we have to capture a small percentage."

In September, Brightline announced plans to build an interurban passenger rail system linking Las Vegas to southern California by taking over the construction of XpressWest, a long-haul railway project. Pending federal approvals, construction is expected to begin in 2019, according to the Brightline-Virgin release.

The Virgin Group has been operating Virgin Trains in the UK for 21 years and, according to the company, passengers have made 38 million trips on the West Coast Main line in the UK.

"Tens of millions of Americans ride the railroads every day and we have been trying for over 10 years to find an opportunity to provide them with the same great service experience," said Branson.