Nevada high-speed train will be pitched to feds

Benjamin Grove

Monday, Nov. 13, 2000 | 11:14 a.m.

WASHINGTON -- The backers of a proposed high-speed train route between Las Vegas and Primm will make their pitch to the Federal Railroad Administration on Tuesday.

The stakes are high for the meeting. Representatives for the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission are competing with six other groups from around the nation for roughly $950 million in federal money to establish the first magnetic levitation train in the nation.

"We expect the FRA to ask questions that we can hit over the fence," said Bill Monahan, planning director for the commission.

The California-Nevada commission on Tuesday will be represented by 12 or 13 officials, including representatives from Salomon Smith Barney, which analyzed cost and revenue projections.

Administration officials will query each of the seven groups this week during three-hour sessions to gather even more details about the lengthy proposals the groups submitted in June.

"The proposals already take up 8 feet of shelf space," Railroad Administration spokesman Mike Purviance said.

The administration hopes to announce a finalist or short list of finalists by Dec. 8, Purviance said.

The final decision rests in large part with Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater, who likely will leave the post in January as a new presidential Cabinet is chosen.

Magnetic levitation trains hover just above a guideway track, propelled by magnetic force up to 300 miles per hour. Riders on the eight-car trains could travel between Las Vegas and Primm in about 11 minutes, officials say.

The 40-mile Las Vegas to Primm route would be the first leg of a proposed 272-mile, $7 billion route to Anaheim. The first leg to Primm would cost an estimated $1.3 billion.

The other groups propose train routes linking: Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh airport; the New Orleans airport and the New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal; Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tenn.; Los Angeles International Airport, downtown L.A., Ontario Airport and Riverside County; Port Canaveral, the Space Center and Titusville Regional Airport in Florida; and Camden Yards in Baltimore, Baltimore-Washington International Airport and Union Station in Washington.

Competition among the seven groups is heated; each proposal has advantages and disadvantages, railroad administration officials say.

The benefits of the Nevada route proposal include a relatively flat topography, limited population through the rail corridor and a limited impact on the environment. Members of the California-Nevada commission also argue their project could be operational relatively soon -- by mid-2005 -- if construction began by early 2002.

The Las Vegas-to-Primm train would carry fewer passengers each year than several of the other proposed trains, including the Pennsylvania, Florida and California proposals. But it would be cheaper to build than the other projects, except the Florida train, estimated to cost about $600 million.

The Las Vegas-to-Primm train would carry roughly 12 million riders in its first year and 14 million by 2015, Monahan said. As many as 80 percent of riders would be tourists shuttling between Las Vegas and Primm to gamble, golf, shop, eat or simply to ride a super speed train, Monahan said.