Groundbreaking for West's High-Speed Brightline Vegas-to-LA Rail Ensues
US Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg drove in a mock rail spike in Las Vegas on Monday, marking the start of work on Brightline West.
This project has been in the works for a long time, but we're still only halfway there with funding.
There have been discussions about a high-speed passenger rail line between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area for decades, but it has never left the station so far. Brightline West is trying to change that.
At a gathering of mostly journalists, Brightline executives, and government workers, Buttigieg said, "Someone asked me a few weeks ago, 'Why can't we have high-speed rail? We want high-speed rail. My answer was, 'We can if we decide to, and America has made that decision.'" He continued, "It is my honor to officially kick off the construction of what will be the first high-speed rail system in United States history."
In a statement before the event, Buttigieg anticipated the project would result in "thousands of union jobs, new links to better work opportunities, less congestion on the roadways, and cleaner air."
Brightline West's train will travel along the Interstate 15 corridor, from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga, California. It will include stations in Ivanpah, Apple Valley, and Hesperia. The Rancho Cucamonga terminal will connect to light rail for an additional 37 miles to downtown Los Angeles.
The train will reach speeds of up to 186 mph, covering the 218-mile distance primarily on the Interstate 15 right-of-way. The company plans to have trains running in time for the Los Angeles Summer Olympics in 2028.
Financing Still Needs Improvement
Although Brightline has only raised half of its projected $12 billion budget, they have received $6.5 billion from the Biden administration. That included a $3 billion grant from federal infrastructure funds and permission to issue another $2.5 billion in tax-exempt bonds. And in 2020, the administration gave the green light for Brightline to sell $1 billion in similar bonds.
Despite slashing the four-hour drive across the Mojave Desert in half, and reducing the 50 million people who travel by car annually, Brightline's founder Wes Edens revealed to the Los Angeles Times in March that their company "will eventually charge more than $400 for a round trip from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga," including an hour for light rail. In comparison, the round trip cost of flying from L.A. to Las Vegas is roughly $75 less.
Despite numerous attempts at high-speed rail in the U.S., where driving is inexpensive and population centers are more spread out than in Europe, where they're common and profitable, the idea of a Vegas to L.A. bullet train dates back to 2005, when Tony Marnell II, creator of the Rio, was unable to make his proposed XpressWest system to Victorville, California a reality.
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Source: www.casino.org
