Looks like Los Angeles and Las Vegas may soon be connected by high speed rail set to begin construction in Sep 2016.
http://gizmodo.com/the-us-and-china-just-made-a-deal-to-build-high-speed-r-1731329831
Who’s gonna pay for it?
I’d sure like to be able to get a loan for 7 Billion:
“Bloomberg reports that $100 million in initial capital will get the project off the ground. (Though that’ll be just a teeny drop in the bucket—the project is expected to cost upwards to $7 billion). To date, only private sector funds have covered the bill, but the project’s applied for loans with the Federal Railroad Administration.”
I would have liked to have read whatever information was in the link. Instead all I saw was some kind of advertisement about a kung fu guy. Don’t know much more than that as I clicked it off almost instantly. No time for that kind of nonsense.
Steve Featherkile said:
Who’s gonna pay for it?
You will…with higher fares!!(http://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-tongue-out.gif)
Sorry to hear you were having problems Dan. I just checked and the link is still working properly. There is a banner ad across the top of the page maybe you saw that. Gizmodo is a tech based news site. Very reputable and very intelligent well written articles. I much prefer reading news there versus the tripe they have on Yahoo for instance. Only problem is they don’t cover world or national news just tech.
Clarifications, this doesn’t go to Los Angeles, it would go to Victorville, which is a good 90 minutes away from LA, without traffic, with - it is over 2 hours away. Do they have the ROWs in place? If not, this whole thing could fail if someone decides not to sell, I highly doubt that any eminent domain action could happen as this is a private enterprise without government backing. What about crossing any Federal lands, again lots of red tape. Stuff like this is a lot easier sold than built.
They all toot about ““High-Speed Rail””… Wow, 100 miles an hour(been over that in an automobile, back in the late 60’s)… Heck, some steam trains were doing that years ago… When they get to 300 MPH, then I’d consider it to be high speed rail…
Vegas resident here…every few months this hits the news. New, improved, and it will happen. LOL, sure when pigs fly. As much as I would like to see it I’m not sure it will ever happen. A few years ago they tried to get a weekly or daily party train to Vegas from LA. Between trying to get trackage rights with UP and I think BNSF, cost of equipment, etc, it seemed to have died a slow painful death. The high speed train has been discussed ever since regular Amtrack stopped running this route years ago. We can hope but will it ever happen? Time will tell. Bill (rntfrmme)
Vic answered the question I would have posted. There is no way it could come out of L.A. Getting a right of way would be impossible. And then there would be Cajon Pass to deal with. Victorville is out in the desert just beyond Cajon, lots of open land between there and Vegas. As far as saving time,we’ll see. Most of the ridership would come from the L.A. basin. Thats going to add a couple hours to that 80 minutes.
Steve, regarding “who’s gonna pay for it?” LA Times reports it would be China Railway International and XPress West. The Chinese say they would come up with an initial investment of $100 million. Construction could begin by Sept 2016. The route would run along I 15. Chinese officials say it would be 230 miles long, rather than just the 185 miles between Victorville and Vegas, because there would be an extension to Palmdale. Eventually the railroad would reach downtown LA. The Victorville-Vegas fare is expected to be $89 per person.
A couple of thoughts. A high speed train contains only 6-8 cars. Not very heavy, and therefore can run up a grade much faster then a standard freighter, so the picked right of way doesn’t need to be the best ROW, they may not run at 200MPH but only at 160MPH for that section. And it would only take a single bore of 12 miles to get under the mountains starting south of Victorville and coming out on the other side at Lytle Creek and paralleling I15 And putting a station at the 210 and 15 junction. Plenty of open land there. They could run a big pipe thru the bore and charge the MWD for the access.
The trouble with HSTs is that in order to run fast the ROW has to be as flat as possible and as straight as possible. I-15 goes through some steep mountains while the railroad follows the valley bottom next to the old Route 66. If they are following 1-15 they are either going to have to tunnel a great deal, or they might as well hook up the Silver Vista because it ain’t going to be going much faster than the Silverton train through that stretch.
It makes no sense to me to announce such grand plans with out first acquiring the ROW.
Should it come to fruition, I have no doubt that mountains will be altered enough to allow for higher speeds. The Chinese are not our friends, I’m sure they’d be happy to exploit our greedy nature.
On a similar note there have been calls for a 4th (I think) Evaluation Study for an HST between Phoenix and Tucson. I suspect some medicinal mary jane has led to some happy speculation … The state can’t afford it and it would have to be separate from the UP. I’m pretty sure civilians think they can use it…
And so it goes…
John