High-speed rail alliance wants federal stimulus money

By Richard N. Velotta

Wednesday, Dec. 9, 2009 | 9:40 a.m.

The newly created Western High-Speed Rail Alliance wants the Federal Railroad Administration to make stimulus money available to regional transportation commissions to fund high-speed rail corridor studies.

The FRA’s current plan for high-speed rail includes corridors in California, the Pacific Northwest and east of the Mississippi River, but nothing in the intermountain West. The alliance contends that western cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas, Salt Lake City and Denver will be among the fastest growing in the next few decades and should be connected with high-speed rail.

Jacob Snow, general manager of the Las Vegas-based Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada and chairman of the alliance, said local transit agencies need to take the lead on developing high-speed passenger rail because the most difficult part of the planning is the final miles of the route to bring a line into a city.

Snow and other members of the four-state alliance made their first public comments in an Internet press conference this morning. Snow and Las Vegas-based transportation consultant Tom Skancke have been the driving forces for forming the alliance, which includes representatives from the Utah Transit Authority, the Denver Regional Council of Governments, the Washoe County Regional Transportation Commission and Arizona’s Maricopa Association of Governments.

Skancke said the alliance is in the process of incorporating as a nonprofit organization that would approach federal agencies for funding to develop plans for a high-speed rail network that would tie into planned rail lines in California and the rest of the country.

The alliance is important to Las Vegas because the city is a key hub in the regional network. A rough route map presented by Skancke in a meeting of the North Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce in October showed routes linking Las Vegas with Phoenix and Salt Lake City as top priorities. Other priority routes include Phoenix to Los Angeles, Salt Lake City to Denver and Salt Lake City to Reno.

The alliance has acknowledged that a route linking Las Vegas with Los Angeles is a high priority that is being pursued by competing private interests. Snow said the RTC has met regularly with the developers of DesertXpress and the American Magline Group, which have separate proposals to build lines between Las Vegas and Southern California. The RTC is neutral in its support for DesertXpress, which plans traditional high-speed rail, or American Magline, which backs magnetic-levitation transport.

In comments in this morning’s conference, Snow said he is pleased that President Obama has made high-speed rail a key component of his administration’s transportation policy, but that he feels multistate approaches to building a national rail network is key to its success, just as the nation’s interstate highway system was developed.

Representatives of the alliance say they have been working with their respective state departments of transportation to get them to understand the organization’s concepts.

Snow also said the group has been communicating with the FRA on freight lines. Separating passenger and freight lines would benefit both systems. He also said he is open to discussions from organizations in other states to expand the alliance. Snow has been in contact with representatives in California, New Mexico and Idaho that have shown interest in the organization’s goals.