Nevada backers of train are down, not out

Benjamin Grove

Friday, Jan. 19, 2001 | 11:20 a.m.

The winners

WASHINGTON -- Officials backing the proposal to bring a futuristic, high-speed train to Nevada are plotting new strategies now that they appear out of the running for nearly $1 billion in federal funding.

That money will go to either Pittsburgh or Washington, D.C.-Baltimore for the magnetic levitation train project, Department of Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater announced Thursday, just two days before he leaves office. The final decision will be made in 2003, officials said.

Those two areas are clearly the best options for the first 240-mph magnetic levitation train of its kind in America, Slater said.

But the Nevada project backers aren't giving up. They had proposed a $1.3 billion, 40-mile route between Las Vegas and the gambling-shopping destination of Primm. It would eventually link Las Vegas and Anaheim.

"We're still alive," California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission Commissioner Joe Stein said Thursday.

Stein said he was disappointed with Slater's announcement, given that the project could have been built by 2005, the soonest of any project. Their project was arguably the cheapest, he said.

"We just felt sure that we could have been operating first -- why not get one of them up and running early -- even if it is out in the desert," Stein said.

Several Nevada project backers interpreted Slater's announcement as only the personal preference of a departing secretary, not a final ruling.

For now, the Pittsburgh and Baltimore-Washington projects will split roughly $14 million in additional seed money, but aren't necessarily guaranteed the $950 million for railway construction, argued Neil Cummings, president of American Magline Group, a group of companies that would construct the rail line. That money still must be appropriated through Congress -- in a new administration.

"Today's decision has no impact on which project gets construction funding," Cummings said.

Nevada project backers plan to appeal to President-elect George W. Bush's Transportation Secretary Norm Mineta, once confirmed. Mineta is from California.

Mineta could be a huge ally for the California-Nevada group, said one project insider, J. Christopher Brady, president of Transrapid International-USA, Inc., which provides much of the technology for six of the seven projects, including the winning projects and the Nevada project.

Brady said he was surprised the Nevada group wasn't in the top two.

"This thing is not over by a long shot," Brady said.

Nevadans also may have a friend in the influential new House Transportation Committee chairman, Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, an ally of Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.

Young has a preference for the Nevada project, a spokesman said today.

"It's too early to say what will be done, but it seems like whenever rail proposals come up, it's the East that gets them," Young spokesman Steve Hansen said.

Nevada project advocates said they could argue that the DOT showed East Coast preferences, especially in choosing the Washington project. The DOT in December celebrated the debut of Amtrak's high-speed Acela train, which now runs daily between Washington and Baltimore.

It's also possible Congress or private interests could find money to keep the Nevada maglev projects under way, officials said.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would contact the DOT soon to "discuss the selection process and criteria used" to award the money. He pledged to use his political juice as the highest-ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee to squeeze money for a Nevada maglev project out of the next federal highway budget.

"Despite today's setback, I still believe that there is a future for maglev in Southern Nevada," Reid said in a written statement.

Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Nev., also pledged to seek private and other federal funding from her seat on the House Transportation Committee.

The top Railroad Administration official overseeing the maglev project proposals said the California-Nevada group's estimated ridership numbers hurt the proposal because tourists, not locals and commuters, were the primary users.

"It's very difficult to forecast ridership in a town like Las Vegas," the administration's maglev supervisor Arnold Kupferman told the Las Vegas Sun Thursday.

Kupferman said the Nevada project had one other notable disadvantage: the states of California and Nevada committed relatively little money compared to the states in the winning bids.

But a study UNLV's Center for Business and Economic Research showed that the project would "have a significant positive impact as a result of both expenditures during construction and operation, and by the large number of new visitors expected to be drawn to Las Vegas by the uniqueness of the train."

Among the economic spinoffs:

The UNLV study said that Nevada would see larger economic benefits than other states.

Those arguments weren't enough to persuade federal transportation planners. Magline's Cummings said the railroad administration showed an "East Coast bigotry" during briefings by the California-Nevada group earlier this year.

"They kept saying, 'Well, what is Primm? Why is that important? Why is it important to bring people to Primm and back?' "

The maglev concept has been in the works for years. DOT officials narrowed a list of regional contenders to seven in May 1999.

Railway officials have been poring over the thick, detailed proposals since then.

In a mid-December meeting at the Department of Transportation, top officials with the Federal Railroad Administration briefed Slater on the seven pitches, Kupferman said. He said his team did not rank the proposals, but merely pointed out the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Slater made the final determination himself, Kupferman said.

A week ago, at a meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington, Slater said publicly he had not made up his mind. A story in the Baltimore Sun hinted Slater would punt the decision to the Bush administration.

But "things have changed since last week," DOT spokesman Wayne Kirwin said, although it is not clear what spurred Slater's decision.

Slater assembled a press conference Thursday that included the powerful city, state and congressional politicians who had lobbied him so heavily, including Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, Pennsylvania and Maryland's four senators and a gaggle of Congressmen representing the two areas.

"Just 46 hours before you leave office, you once again have demostrated your wise and discerning judgment," Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md., said to Slater. Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., called Slater "one of the best transportation secretaries ever."

By all acounts, the pressure on Slater had been intense.

"He got lobbied to death," Cummings said.

Slater heard from lawmakers and lobbyists in formal hearings and cocktail parties. But Slater, an Arkansas native, on Thursday did not discuss how he had made the final "extremely difficult" decision. He merely praised both projects as keys to the growing transportation gridlock in the East. He called the two projects "best positioned for early demonstration of Maglev's promise."

As a consolation prize, Slater offered each of the five losing projects $879,000. Slater urged their project managers to keep searching for alternative funding.