A ceremony with confetti and many smiling politicians has revived one of America's old dreams: a high-speed rail line. Work began this Monday to connect Las Vegas (Nevada) with Rancho Cucamonga (California), a city 82 kilometers east of Los Angeles. The 351-kilometer line will be in operation for the 2028 Games, says Brightline Holdings, the company in charge of the $12 billion project. Half of this investment will be covered by the federal government. Pete Buttigieg, the Minister of Transportation of the Joe Biden Administration, has assured that the train will create “thousands of union jobs, new connections to better economic opportunities, less traffic and more clean air.”
The project aims to cut in half the four-hour trip now made between points across the Mojave Desert. The electric trains will serve about eleven million people or about 30,000 passengers daily, according to forecasts shared by Brightline, who won the concession for the work in 2019. The company estimates that about 50 million trips are made between Las Vegas and Southern California annually. The vast majority, about 40 million, are made by land via the I-15 highway, which is congested in several parts of the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The road has been laid out to go to the middle of this highway.
Wes Edens, the president of Brightline, said in an interview with Los Angeles Times that the price of the ticket for a round trip will cost approximately $400. The company operates a similar line in Florida, where it connects the cities of Orlando and Miami (about 400 kilometers) since September in a trip of three and a half hours. The train cars offer, for $149 (one-way price), access to a conference room, WiFi, and a buffet that includes wine and beer.
Those in charge of the Brightline project traveled to the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Japan to investigate the high-speed rail network in those countries. The Florida train has a maximum speed of 200 kilometers per hour, while the one that will connect Nevada and California will reach 300 kilometers per hour, making it the only one in the entire country comparable to the Japanese bullet trains, the Tokaido Shinkansen.
This train is one of the star works of Joe Biden's large infrastructure package. Last December, the federal government announced its commitment to inject oxygen into the US railway network, which fell into oblivion after World War II, when Dwight Eisenhower presented several decrees to favor the automotive and aeronautical industries.
Biden, on the other hand, announced last winter an investment of $8.2 billion in 10 passenger train lines. It is the largest expense since Amtrak, the country's passenger train company, was founded half a century ago. Of that pool of public resources, some 3,000 million will be allocated to the Las Vegas-Rancho Cucamonga project. Brightline has also received federal approval to sell $3.5 billion in bonds that will be used for construction.
The Administration, which has also increased its commitment to clean energy, affirms that the train will help eliminate hundreds of thousands of trips between the two States, which translates into a reduction of 400,000 tons of polluting emissions. The Executive's projections also ensure that the work will create about 35,000 temporary jobs during construction and about 1,000 permanent jobs once operation begins.
Brightline's goal is to link cities that are too close to fly between them, but too far to drive. It remains to be seen whether Americans show an appetite for this new transportation offering. Especially in the West of the country, where the distances are much longer than on the other coast.
In Florida, Brightline reported losses of $190 million last year in the first nine months of operation (in which only the connection between Miami and Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach worked). The western proposal also loses appeal because the trip from Rancho Cucamonga to downtown Los Angeles can take up to two hours at rush hour.
Las Vegas needs more and better mobility options. The city is approaching three million inhabitants and is consolidating its role as the largest tourist attraction in the west of the country. In addition to its casinos and hotels, the city steals the spotlight from areas of California with the arrival of a new baseball team, a Formula 1 race and the potential landing of an NBA franchise. Last year, its airport handled a record 57.6 million passengers.
The last time this city saw a passenger train, the Desert Wind, enter its territory in 1997. At least since 2005, the idea of a bullet train heading to the Los Angeles metropolitan area has been heard. Biden's commitment to passenger trains has given new life to projects that want to connect Dallas with Houston in Texas; Atlanta (Georgia) with Charlotte (North Carolina) and Chicago with St. Louis, Missouri.
The Acela Express, Amtrak's fastest train, is out of service today at a Philadelphia depot. Intended to begin its journey in 2021 between Boston and Washington, the cars are dusty because the tests with the train were poor, despite the fact that 2.3 billion dollars were invested in their acquisition. The manufacturer, Alstom, assured that the failure was the fault of the deterioration of the tracks, which caused liquid leaks and even broken windows due to vibration. Many consider the Acela fiasco to illustrate America's divorce from high-speed rail. A marriage that Brightline intends to reunite.
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