Its NOT a clusterfuck. Its perfectly FINE for 99% of it. The problem is like with ANY city, once you hit the 'downtown' area there is limited space and lots of people. It gets congested.. But how is a train going from Orlando to Tampa going to help the 99% of those cars who are going from work in Orlando to home in the burbs or work in Tampa to home in the burbs? Its NOT. How many people work in Orlando and live in Tampa and vice versa? I'd guess about 4 people.
You obviously have never driven I-4 in the morning or evening. This is completely not true. It is bottleneck congested traffic in the morning and evening during normal commute times. Not saying a train will fix this, and not saying it won't fix it either. You just have no clue or you are blatantly lying about this traffic.
You are probably one of the people who said we didn't need the over pass for the cross-town expressway too, and it has helped tremendously.
Its 85 miles between Tampa and Orlando. How fast do you think the train is going to go? Either it won't have any stops and will be worthless, or they will have say 10 stops and it will only get up to about 75mph before the next stop anyway. The same as all the cars on the freeway! Who won't have to stop every 8 miles!
If people were able to drive 75 miles an hour on the highway there wouldn't be any traffic problems. During rush hour the average MPH is 40-45mph,,
I4 is bad during rush hour from US27 up into Sanford.
Any light rail solution for that corridor could be useful, especially with feeders from the Airport and Disney and UCF.
High speed rail along that stretch would be a waste - for half the trip; the train would have to be preparing to stop.
Unless you build two sets of tracks from US27 north; one for light rail and the other for HSR.
Commuter rail from running in some pattern connecting MCO, UCF, downtown, Disney and I4 would be practical. Spoke & hub or just a loop, either would make a difference. Spoke/hub will be more beneficial and potentially get people out of the vehicles.
Where the HSR rail would tie into???
I do not know enough about Tampa but given that there is an airport, downtown, Bush Gardens and USF, some similar situational pattern could exist.
HSR is not, build it and they will come situation. It is a we have a serious problem and HSR will help solve it better than adding lane miles.
From US27 to US75 there is no real congestion traffic at any hour not caused by road construction. Therefore HSR is not really justifiable there.
There are AMTRACK runs from Miami to Orlando and north. when I lived in Fort Lauderdale, those train cars were maybe 1/3 full at the most.
The commuter rail from Palm Beach to Miami was heavily full. And that line ran down the coast stopping in every city along the way. It was used by commuters and helped offload I95 and the Turnpike
As others have stated, the demand for light commuter rail exists in Orlando - the need/demand/vision for HSR connecting to Mamii, Jacksonville, Tamp does not.
Now if you want to run HSR from Miami up to Atlanta; that might be justifiable.
That could connect Miami, Orlando and then buzz along I75 with a feeder into Tampa.
But the money wold be better spent inside Fla by puttign up commuter rail in the Orlando area.