Thursday, July 27, 2000 | 11:20 a.m.
Amtrak's high-speed passenger train service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, scheduled to start rolling in September, has been sidetracked and is now on hold for an indefinite period of time.
Amtrak announced in December that a $12 million 300-passenger train built by Renfe Talgo of America, based in Seattle, would offer daily 5 1/2-hour trips, the first passenger rail service to Las Vegas since May 1997.
But Union Pacific Railroad, which must make $28 million in track improvements to accommodate the new passenger train, has been delayed in its efforts to get permission to build.
Amtrak was scheduled to pay Union Pacific $14 million immediately for improvements on 340 miles of track and $14 million more after service begins.
Union Pacific officials couldn't be reached for comment.
The construction delay is centered around the most expensive part of the track improvement project, a 26-mile section between Cima and Kelso, Calif. There, the railroad intends to build track parallel to the existing line so that the passenger trains will be able to pass slower freight trains on a long uphill section of the route.
The parallel track would pass through the Mojave National Preserve, a 1.6 million-acre desert area maintained by the National Park Service just south of the California-Nevada border.
Chris Stubbs, an environmental compliance specialist with the Mojave National Preserve's office in Barstow, Calif., said Union Pacific first made contact with his office on the project about three weeks ago.
Stubbs said Union Pacific must prepare an environmental assessment outlining some of the environmental issues that would arise from track construction. Stubbs said such an assessment would take a minimum of 30 days to complete, but he doesn't know how far along Union Pacific officials are on drafting the document.
A completed environmental assessment would be presented in a public meeting and Stubbs' office and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will review it to determine if a more comprehensive environmental impact statement needs to be prepared.
Stubbs said federal regulators would base their decisions on whether an environmental impact statement is needed on provisions in the Endangered Species Act. He said the review would consider whether the parallel track would cut through habitat of the desert tortoise.
Stubbs said if an environmental impact statement is ordered, it could take 12 to 18 months to complete and any tortoises found would have to be relocated from the construction area.
Once all permits are secured by Union Pacific, it is expected to take seven to eight months to build the parallel track. That means the best-case scenario for Amtrak would be a startup in spring 2001. But if an environmental impact statement is ordered, the train couldn't begin operation until sometime in 2002.
Liz O'Donoghue, a spokeswoman for Amtrak West, the business unit that operates Amtrak in seven western states, said her company no longer wants to predict a start-up date for the new service.
"The anticipation of service starting in September was conditional on several things being completed after our December announcement," O'Donoghue said.
And most of those things are in place, she said.
"We have the equipment, we have the marketing (program) developed and we have our commitment from the state (of Nevada)," she said. "The only thing we don't have is the track improvements."
The train set, in fact, was rolled into Las Vegas when Amtrak made the service announcement in December.
Each of the 14 cars is 44 feet long, about half the size of a standard Amtrak car. Depending on the seating configuration, each car can hold 17 to 36 passengers.
Each car also has a pair of television monitors. On them, Amtrak officials can play videos on passenger procedures, en-route movies or maps showing the progress of the train on its route and upcoming station stops. Trains headed for Las Vegas could also show promotions for sponsoring properties like casinos or instructional gaming videos.
Talgo trains use "tilt technology" designed to maintain high speeds in curves. The train is rated to travel at 125 mph, but Amtrak expects to run the Las Vegas train at about 79 mph.
Amtrak successfully operates a similar Talgo train in the Pacific Northwest.
While the exterior of the Las Vegas train is silver, blue and white, the interior in the coach section is a purple hue while the custom-class cabin is red.
Each train also will have a full-service dining car. In a bistro car, designers installed a fiber-optic ceiling depicting a universe full of stars.
Amtrak projects about 62,000 passengers would use the Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas train service in its first year and fares, conservatively, would cover the $6 million in annual operating expenses of the train.
The company has projected ticket prices to cost between $119 and $179 for a round trip.
The state commitment to which O'Donoghue referred is $2 million in federal Congestion Mitigation Air Quality improvement funding administered by the Federal Highway Administration. Gov. Kenny Guinn pledged the funding to support the project.
Officials said the funding is eligible because the train is expected to clear some automobile traffic off Interstate 15. Three out of four Southern California visitors to Las Vegas drive here in cars.
O'Donoghue said her office receives frequent inquiries about when the service will begin.
"It's by far the most sought-after service from tour operators," O'Donoghue said. "There's a tremendous clamor, a lot of Southern California local sales and a lot of international sales representatives have been calling us without us even doing any of our marketing programs."
But despite the anticipated popularity of the train, Las Vegas hotel-casinos have not stepped forward to invest in it.
Gil Mallery, president of Amtrak West, has said casino properties balked at committing to the project until they were sure it was going to be a reality. He was hoping the public display of the train in December would jump-start investor interest.
But so far, no casino has made a commitment to invest by buying advance tickets for passengers.
Amtrak officials also have approached the Rio hotel-casino, Boyd Gaming Corp, which owns several downtown properties, and the Fremont Street Experience about building platforms for train stops within the city.
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