Brightline's president explains how Florida's private rail service is betting on the Super Bowl to coax new riders out of their cars

• Brightline, a private train between Miami and West Palm Beach, is capitalizing on Super Bowl week to juice its ridership.
• The company's president, Patrick Goddard, explained the creative ways he's coaxing drivers out of their cars in a "market where train travel is kind of foreign."
• By the end of 2020, Brightline - soon to be called Virgin Trains - hopes to break ground between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
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Tens of thousands of football fans will descend on South Florida this week for Super Bowl 54, which will take place at the Miami Dolphins' stadium.

And while the area is no stranger to large events, private rail operator Brightline is hoping to convert many of the visitors to regular train riders on its higher-speed service between West Palm Beach and Miami.

"South Florida needs alternate mobility solutions," Patrick Goddard, president of the soon-to-be-dubbed Virgin Trains said in an interview with Business Insider. "And the Super Bowl is a wonderful opportunity to show people what a meaningful alternate modality the train is."

The company is offering 10 packs of one-way tickets for $130, which will come with a "big game survival kit" of water bottles, sunglasses, a T-shirt, and coupons in an effort to coax more drivers away from their cars and onto the train.

"It's a phenomenal opportunity to get in front of a lot of eyeballs," Goddard said.

And while Brightline doesn't serve the the game directly, it's offering shuttle buses from its Fort Lauderdale station - roughly 17 miles away - to a parking lot near the stadium.

Despite its relatively small footprint of just three stations, Brightline has big ambitions and the Super Bowl could play a pivotal role in its expansion. That's so long as the "adoption phase," as Goddard puts it, keeps up a steady pace.

"This is not unlike the Acela or something, you name it," he said. "They've all gone through this adoption period of two- to three-plus years. For a market where train travel is kind of foreign, we have to think of creative ways to get people in through the top of the funnel."

Goddard pointed to events like a "Polar Express" train and special "wine trains," and said that once someone rides the train once, their likelihood of taking a return trip is 75%.

Eventually, Brightline hopes to connect its current service as far north as Orlando, serving destinations from Disney World to Miami's Cruise ports. As a private company, its ridership thus far isn't public and officials declined to share figures with Business Insider.

However, local news outlets reported the company told bond investors that total ridership for 2019 was less than half of internal estimates. Goddard says that's not a worry - at least, not yet.

"I think we set some internal goals that were a little optimistic and that we probably should have kept to ourselves," he said. "But if you look at our ridership study, we're actually right on track."

Brightline has eyes on other markets not served by Amtrak as well, its owner told Business Insider in 2019. Wes Edens, the billionaire founder of Fortress Investment Group, hopes to break ground soon on a route from Las Vegas to Los Angeles as soon as 2020.

Goddard says he's happy to work together with Edens on a vision for American passenger rail that doesn't have to be looked at with disdain anymore.

"We're only about 50 to 80 years late to the intercity passenger-rail party," Goddard said. "But we're going to get there, and Florida is just a first step."