A passenger railroad backed by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group named the 250-mile Atlanta to Charlotte route as a potential expansion opportunity in its IPO filing.

Virgin Trains USA Inc. is a strategic partnership between Miami-based Brightline and Virgin Group that filed for an IPO on the Nasdaq last month.

Brightline, America's first new major private intercity passenger railroad in over a century, launched service between Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Florida, in May 2018. It plans to expand to Orlando and Tampa. Pending the closing of the previously announced XpressWest acquisition and receipt of necessary federal approvals, it also plans to begin next year building a railway to connect Las Vegas to Southern California.

In its Nov. 16 IPO filing, Virgin Trains USA named the 240-mile Atlanta-Charlotte route, with an 8.4 million population, as one of eight U.S. expansion corridors. These cities “possess what we believe are key attributes for a successful intercity rail network using existing infrastructure,” it said. Read the filing here.

“The United States dramatically lags behind both Europe and Asia in express passenger rail service despite having one of the most developed rail and highway systems in the world. We believe we can capitalize on this extensive infrastructure to expand our services into new markets. Our expansion plans are initially focused on markets with characteristics and demographics similar to those of our Florida passenger rail system and the Vegas Expansion – connecting highly populated cities with substantial intercity travel and separated by distances of 200 to 300 miles that are ‘too long to drive, too short to fly.’ As we have done in Florida and Las Vegas, we intend to target markets where we believe we can utilize existing transportation corridors – either rail, highway or a combination of both – to cost effectively build our systems, as opposed to developing entirely new corridors at potentially significantly higher costs.”

The company noted transit-oriented development of real estate at or near its stations for a mix of uses including commercial, retail, restaurants and residential purposes, and sponsorship deals, “could generate further meaningful returns.”

As part of Virgin Group’s strategic partnership and trademark licensing agreement with the former Brightline, Virgin Group was making a minority investment in the company. It is managed and operated by the Brightline executive team and affiliates of Fortress Investment Group.

The railroad currently travels between Miami and West Palm Beach, with stations in those two cities, plus Fort Lauderdale.

The $2 billion West Palm Beach-Orlando leg of the rail project is slated to be completed by spring 2021. The company recently announced plans to build an intercity rail system to connect Las Vegas and Southern California, which it hopes to stabilize by the fourth quarter of 2023.

The train company estimated the cost of the Orlando line at $2.1 billion, the Tampa expansion at $1.7 billion and the Las Vegas route at $3.6 billion, according to its SEC filing.

Read more here.