Transit Briefs: Brightline, LA Metro

Brightline continues train testing up to 79 mph in Indian River County. Also, LA Metro’s partnership with Transit reaches end of three-year agreement.

Brightline is continuing critical work on its Orlando extension with train testing in Indian River County, Fla., that will see trains travel up to 79 mph. The train testing began April 1 and will go through April 8.

The work, known as signal and track cutover, will integrate a new second railroad track into the existing corridor and will span railroad crossings through Vero Beach, Oslo and Indrio.

Flaggers will be present at crossings from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. while the new rail signal system is commissioned and train testing up to 79 mph can be expected along the corridor. Work could bring additional wait times at railroad crossings.

Metro announced March 31 that is ending its three-year no-cost partnership with trip planning app Transit, which was launched in May 2020.

“It was a very productive partnership that we think gave riders a better trip planning tool than we had previously offered,” Metro said. “Our goal moving forward is to try to develop a single app for Metro with all our offerings, including trip planning.”

According to Metro, core features of Transit are still available for free, and the agency says it has a trip planner on its website that is also available for mobile phones. Many different apps, Metro says, pull data from Metro that are used for trip planners, including Transit.

App features in Transit that will continue to be available after the end of the partnership with or without a Royale subscription, will include:

• Real-time countdowns and tracking for nearby, upcoming bus and rail services.
• Trip planning.
• Notifications of service disruptions.
• Locations of nearby Metro Bike Share stations.
• Connecting options such as scooters, Uber, Lyft and Curb taxic.
• Transit’s GO feature, which offers step-by-step navigation, crowdsources real-time vehicle locations to provide more precise information to other riders, and allows riders to answer Rate-My-Rode questions about their trip.

Royale is Transit’s subscription service, which includes additional app features and information, such as departure information for lines farther away or trips further in the future. While Transit was Metro’s official app, Royale was offered for free to all Metro riders.

Now that Transit is no longer Metro’s official app, users may purchase their own subscription for $4.99/month or $24.99/year.

Transit is giving away free Royale subscriptions to low-income app users, available upon request in the app. Transit’s trip planner, in which riders enter a destination and receive a detailed trip plan using public transit, remains free for all riders in the app.