I’m well aware of the history of “the railway that went to sea”. Back then there was very little population other than fishing villages on any of the Keys until you got to Key West. The reasons the railway was built was because of the expected ocean traffic [which never happened] and its closeness to Cuba.
As I said, my comment was a joke. There is no way a new Miami to Key West railroad will ever be built. It would have to be built almost entirely on the water as no land space is available. The environment restrictions alone would prevent it plus the Keys property owners won’t allow anything that spoiled their views of either the ocean or the gulf.
I couldn’t agree more. Its never going to happen, nor should it happen. The last thing those living in the Keys want is to look out on the Atlantic or the Gulf and have their view spoiled by the sight of an endless causeway. I hereby agree to never post another “tongue in cheek” comment again on this forum.
"I think it is much more than just a few bridges. Land is in very short supply in the Keys, and that which exists is treasured by the inhabitants. I think any politically feasible route would have to “go to sea” southwest of Homestead and remain there nearly the entire way. Essentially I am thinking about a 100 miles of causeway with occasional bridges to allow the passage of boats.
Such a proposal is a dream for the consulting and lawyer classes who would spend years and millions debating enviromental impact alone, but not practical idea. I like trains, but this is literally a bridge too far!"
Anyways back to the Original Post on Junk Bond Financing. That is also commonly done with high risk or uncertain projects. Nothing wrong with it as you can refinance the bonds at a much lower rate as soon as your project or business proves itself. What Junk Bond financing tells you is financial investors place a high risk on the expected outcome of this project. The Company has some padding before it needs to issue the Junk Bonds and either withdrew the first offering because they did not like the terms or they failed to capture enough interest. The second offering should go better because the investors see the project moving forwards on the ground and it looks to them like the project will happen if they participate or not…so that will be a push towards investors.
If you read Trumps book art of the Deal he has done similar with building projects to get them financed. On one project investors were reluctant, then he hired some buddy’s construction equipment to start moving earth on the future building site and once investors saw that…they jumped on board. In his case it was all a farce of course to push investors to finance.
There are two parts to Brightline. One is that is primarily a way to generate money from FEC’s real estate holdings. That’s what’s going to pay back the initial capital outlay. The second part is train operation. All the train operation has to do is throw off enough cash to cover operating costs, incremental track maintenance and enough capital to replace/rebuild the equipment periodically. The initial estimates show this will be possible.
Matthew has the posibility of severing several bridges on the Key west highway which would indicate the same problem for any rail line. Now depending of Matthew’s track several FEC bridges could have severe damage much like happened to UP’s Brazos river bridge ? From Mia to Cocoa and on to JAX /?
I watched Verizon spin off a subsidary that went bankrupt less than two years later. It was a scam for Verizon to shed over $8 Billion in bond debt and close to 5,000 employees in one transaction but to isolate the Verizon name and brand from the bankruptcy and the permanent layoff (review the whole Idearc Media transaction). Thats the smarter way to do it and if Trump was smarter he would have done it that way, I agree.
Small potatos compared with other transactions by much larger companies. It’s only an issue because he is running for President. If he was CEO of Verizon he would be courted by the Democrats for political contributions. Stiffing contractors, since most of them that are complaining are in NYC, NJ and a very few in Las Vegas…I would look at the contract and what the dispute was about but otherwise that would not surprise me either due to the lack of honesty in those three states when it comes to business contracts. In Manhatten he had to get the Mob’s cooperation to get concrete poured on time to do that you have to grease the skids here and there as they say. That was back in the 1970’s and 1980’s and not sure it is still working that way in NYC today but I have my doubts the Democrats or Rudy for that matter completely cleaned up NYC.