Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2002 | 9:40 a.m.
Boosters of a proposed high-speed, high-tech train from Southern California to Southern Nevada heard a warning Tuesday: Finding the billions in funding needed to build the train will not be easy.
"The boys in the Northeast aren't so happy about this," said Lloyd Jones, chief of staff for Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska. "So it's a fight. It always is."
Jones, whose boss is the chairman of the House Transportation Committee and a supporter of the train and other big transportation projects in the West, said some congressmen will want to block train funding.
Jones joined Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman and mayors from Ontario, Barstow and Victorville in California for a meeting at the Bellagio. The meeting also brought together would-be builders of the train and its infrastructure in an effort to boost the train's local prospects.
"Just because your all in it, and the chairman's there, it's still a hell of a fight," Jones warned.
The Clinton administration two years ago designated Pittsburgh and Baltimore as the sites for federally funded "maglev" train demonstration projects. But supporters in the West and in Washington continue to fight for a western project.
The proposed train would literally float over a steel rail through magnetic-levitation technology and would be capable of speeds of 300 mph, cutting commuting time to Anaheim, Calif., to about 90 minutes.
Local supporters, including the entire Nevada congressional delegation, have secured a few million for preliminary design studies, but the project would need about $1.3 billion just to construct a 40-mile demonstration project from Las Vegas to Primm. The entire line from Anaheim to Las Vegas would cost an estimated $4.4 billion.
Young, who visited Hoover Dam two weeks ago, has pledged support for the western maglev project as well as continued funding for a new bridge over the Colorado River and other big transportation projects for Southern Nevada.
But he also has warned that with a shopping list of Las Vegas-area highway and transit needs, the area faces a potentially rough ride when Congress debates the Transportation Equity Act next spring.
The act, dubbed TEA-03, would set federal transportation funding priorities for the next six years.
"That will have a lot to do with how the whole project will be funded," said Bob Herbert, transportation director and representative at the meeting for Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. Reid, an advocate for the train, is Senate majority whip and chairman of the Senate's Transportation Infrastructure Committee.
"It's going to be tight, but this is something important to Sen. Reid," Herbert said.
The purpose of Tuesday's meeting was to show local, state and federal support for the project in advance of the TEA-03 debate, organizers said.
Neil Cummings, president of American Magline Group, said supporters need to show policymakers in Washington that there is widespread enthusiasm for the train project.
Cummings' American Magline Group consists of companies that could provide the technology and infrastructure for building the high-speed train. The companies include Hirschfeld Steel Co., Parsons Transportation Group, General Atomics and Transrapid International-USA Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of the German company that manufacturers the train.
The companies' representatives were matched by political representatives from the California and Nevada cities that could benefit from a high-speed train. Also attending the meeting were representatives of the German government's transportation ministry and from Transrapid's overseas operations, who showed how the maglev proposal is working now in Germany and soon in Shanghai, China.
One local policymaker said a similar train is past due in the U.S. Southwest.
"I am victim of the present conditions on Interstate 15," Goodman said. Last Christmas, Goodman and his wife spent more than 10 hours stuck in traffic returning from a family vacation.
He noted that discussion of the maglev train has been going on for about 20 years.
"We need that train," he said. "It's no longer a luxury. It is a necessity ... Let's now get off the dime. It's taken too long."
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