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twitterHigh-speed train option to Victorville advances
COURTESY PHOTO
A rendering shows a DesertXpress train, which is expected to reach a top speed of about 150 miles per hour and travel between Victorville, Calif., and Las Vegas.
Thursday, July 2, 2009 | 3:31 p.m.
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- Sen. Harry Reid speaks at a press conference on Thursday, July 2, 2009.
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- U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood speaks at a press conference on Thursday, July 2, 2009.
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A high-speed train should be in place in 2012 that links Las Vegas and Southern California.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today announced that plans are moving ahead for the DesertXpress train to Victorville, which is a private project. Reid had thrown his support behind the project, saying it had a better chance of getting built than an alternative maglev option that would have linked Las Vegas and Anaheim.
Officials hope to break ground in the first quarter of next year, with the project expected to be completed two years later.
As a private project, DesertXpress has insisted it has no interest in competing for $8 billion in federal recovery money — although more recently its backers said they may seek federal loans to help finance the $5 billion project.
Reid said today that plans are in place to link the project with California’s north-south trunk line "soon after" the Victorville project is complete, although no specific timeline is in place. The $45 billion trunk-line project links San Francisco and Southern California.
DesertXpress envisions a spur linking its Victorville stop to the California train’s Palmdale station, about 50 miles west. The Sun reported today that the U.S. Transportation secretary would announce the designation of a federal high-speed-rail corridor between Las Vegas and Southern California.
The one-way fare between Las Vegas and Southern California would be about $50.
DesertXpress is a private enterprise currently unaffiliated with a state agency.
Sun Archives
- Path clears for federal support of fast train to California (7-2-2009)
- High-speed train plan gets notice in D.C. (6-24-2009)
- Public or private, rail line will need major subsidies from government (6-14-2009)
- Maglev or DesertXPress, this could be your new ride (6-14-2009)
- Trade-offs between technologies include speed, cost (6-14-2009)
- Maglev train to press on without Reid (6-10-2009)
- Reid sides with Desert Xpress fast train option (6-9-2009)
- State sends no representative to talk on high-speed trains (6-5-2009)
- Obama outlines vision for high-speed rail network (4-16-2009)
- 8 states seek stimulus money for high-speed rail (4-15-2009)
- No waste in rail dream (3-5-2009)
- Economic crisis an opportunity to be greener (3-1-2009)
- Vegas, Midwest seek the $8 billion for fast trains (2-23-2009)
- Calif. bond would launch bullet train project (9-26-2008)
Discussion: 30 comments so far…
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Once harry cute the support for campaign backing deal on the rail project the discussion time was over. Obama is not going against harry on this local project. Obama understand pay to play very well, he perfected it.
another failure in the making.
Idiots.
I thought it was supposed to go to ANaheim instead of just VIctorville. NOW this IS a TOTAL WASTE OF MONEY!
How does one get from Victorville to Anaheim or to LA????? Rent a car? Take a bus? A taxi?
What are they thinking.....
How is the ridership going to pay for the fuel to operate this unit yet alone the operating costs?
Sun Staff must be playing a joke on a new journalist.
Katie, you ask "what are they thinking". On Sunday (a holiday weekend) I want you to drive to Victorville and see how much fun it is driving 20 mph because there are only two lanes. A four hour trip to LA now takes eight. New Years Eve, 18 hours. Victorville is key, because once you get there, traffic begins to branch north, south, and west and the roads are wider to accomodate more traffic. How to get there you ask, with your car, which you park, and get on the train. If you put the train station in Anaheim, then people living inland would have to drive west to catch a train to go east. Victorville is a wiser location. I think a train is long overdue and anyone who has lived in a big city would probably agree.
The train would be electric...
The desert express is going to Victorville cause its the jewel of southern california. And people driving from socal would much rather drive halfway to vegas, park their car, pay for a train ticket that would prob. cost more for a group of people than the gas it would take to contine driving, wait for the train to leave, and rent a car or take a expensive cab everywhere once in vegas? And the other direction people that live in vegas would much rather be dropped off 2 1/2 hours from the beach in bumble@%&@ and rent a car or take a 200 dollar taxi ride to LA.
Let me guess the same people that thought up and built the LAS VEGAS monorail are cooking this one up. "rolls eyes"
I didn't make myself clear. The point of the train is to get Southern Californians to Vegas, not accomodate Vegas people to Southern California. The ridership will be come from Southern Californians funneling to Victorville to catch the train. These investors did not have focus group in Las Vegas to survey their willingness to ride a train to Victorville, they were all in Southern Cal. The purpose of the train is to get millions of S. Cal. to one point in Nevada vs. our small population to many points in S. California. It will boost our economy because think of how many people decide not come to Vegas because of the miserable traffic on Sunday.
I'm still having a hard time wrapping my head around this. It's a destination north of the major SoCal population areas, which is notoriously awful for traffic congestion. A drive to Victorville will probably take as long as a drive to get out of the traffic loops. Yet when you get to Victorville you'll get on a train and cross your fingers in regards to transportation once you get here; while the norm nowadays is you'll just have a drive ( which isn't that bad once you get out of the cities ) and total freedom once you get here. I just don't see how it'll make that much difference for Cali-to-LV vacations to justify anyone spending the money to build this route.
The original Maglev seemed like a great idea; great destination areas, great speed of transport, great technology that would attract attention, etc... yet I understand why it would be less desirable nowadays due to costs. But a cheesey alternative to it being pursued instead?
Stupid.
pure stupidity, but typical Reid BS....
I lean liberal, but I have to agree that Harry is just using this to have a pin on his lapel before his election ( "I connected California to Nevada... Stupidly yeah, but I did it" ), instead of actually pursuing a viable alternative. Having a Senator as majority leader may be a plus, but when you see the job he's doing lately I wouldn't be that sad to see him go. He's been asleep in the Senate ( 2001-2006 the senate needed only 51 votes to pass major bills, 2007-Now it seems like a breaking a filabuster is required. GREAT JOB HARRY! ) and his stupidity on this issue makes him seem like he doesn't have a clue as to what would help Las Vegans. Oh well, hopefully we'll end up with a good Democratic primary instead of 2 Ensigns in the Senate.
I'm still crossing my fingers for the Maglev though, it just seems to not only help the Cali-to-LV tourism but also tourism in general.
Family flies into Vegas, parents hit the town in LV, whole family gets on the high-tech train to Disneyland/Knotts. Flies home from there. That just seems like tourism gold to me.
Eventually they'll build a train from Victorville to Anaheim, see.
What I don't like is the fact they just had a train pileup in the news that uses the old fashioned railways similar to the Transcontinental Railroad. This one looks similar. Imagine when they rear-end a train at 150 mph.
The Maglev at least looked cool and advanced. I still think the train should be about 20 feet wide (with a wider track), so you can move around and enjoy. Make it an attraction in and of itself so we can get Chinese to spend money to come ride it before they end up owning it.
$5 Billion. $50 per person, each way. That's 50 MILLION RIDES before it's paid for. Not to mention, upkeep dollars, salaries, marketing, etc. WASTE OF MONEY ... that I am sure Obama and Reid will want Nevadans to pay for. PLUS, a car of 4 guys driving from LA. They stop at Victorville and pay $400 roundtrip at that point? It's a tank of GAS. That's all. More DEMO and LIB wasted spending and ideas.
Help me understand this lunacy? Why would Southern California drivers want to pay $50 (probably more) each way to take a train from Victorville to Las Vegas when they can fly for the same amount of money from Burbank or LAX. In both cases, you would still need to rent a car in Las Vegas to get around.
Having driven the I15 from Los Angeles to Las Vegas many times, the worst part of the drive is getting to Victorville in the first place.
Unless we provide a way for Southern California travelers to get on a train from Los Angeles that will take them directly to Las Vegas ( instead of having to travel to Victorville) this project is doomed to failure.
A better use of money would be to widen the I15 at its choke points and how about getting rid of that crazy agricultural inspection station on the Southbound I15 in the middle of nowhere where our tax dollars employ people to stand and waive people by.
The train is more "green" for one, less gas pollution, which is supposed to be morally better. You can get drunk and take a cab once you get to Las Vegas. It should decrease the number of car wrecks. It'll create jobs. Why not, it's something to do. Forget about the "costs too much" idea. Everything costs too much if you look at it that way. There just needs to be activity to keep an economy going. Building the pyramids would have cost too much if you look at it in monetary terms, but it put people to work and created an economy, just to build some stupid pile of rocks... and don't give me the slave BS because you can say the same about our jobs today. All someone had to say is they have this new source of money, and they were pharaoh. Today they are called Bindenbergs or something.
Where do I sign up for a rental car franchise in VictorVille?
Well, these trains aren't going to be finished for a while yet, and gas isn't likely to be $3 a gallon when they do. This city needs some non-oil based transportation infrastructure or we are messed up on getting people out here when long distance car/plane travel become unaffordable for the middle class. We are not really near any major city of any kind and pretty isolated. This would help fix that, ideally.
I say "ideally" because Sig Rogich's juice train isn't going to help us in this regard. Go Maglev, or go all the way to Palmdale, or go home.
Mike by the time gas becomes unaffordable electric or other fuels will be so cheap the maglev and desertxpress will still be losing money.
We need protection from BAD political investments by putting the politicians, NOT TAXPAYERS on the hook for any losses.
I'm so glad we'll have a train to Victorville that will get us to the middle of the high desert in 80 or 90 minutes. That's wonderful. Last time I figured travel time for public transportation across town, the estimate was three hours. Does anybody else see a problem here? How about some efficient public transportation within our own valley???? I'm sickened by this huge waste, but not surprised.
$50 each way to Victorville and back. Much, much less than the price of a DUI ticket.
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...Good move dumping the Mag-Lev. Nothing like buying a Cadillac and getting laid off after two payments. Better to buy a Chevy, cheaper road and track bed upgrade, locomotives and cars can be built domestically and it'll take years to teach Californian's to park their cars and ride the rails. Dining and bar cars a must.
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Excellent IDEA
TO ANYONE THAT THINKS THIS WONT WORK....YOU ARE A MORON!!!! MOST PEOPLE COME TO VEGAS COME FROM CALI... AND MOST DONT LEAVE THE STRIP..... SO TAKE YOUR HEADS OUT OF YOUR A$$'$
AND BESIDES THIS IS GREAT NEWS FOR THE HOM MARKET IN VEGAS PEOPLE WILL STAY HERE KNOWING THEY CAN JUST HOP A TRAIN TO GET TO THE BEACH!!!
DONT BE SUCH DUMB@$$'$
AND YES THEY WILL CONNECT IT TO ANAHEIM
I just want to grab myself and go "eeeee, heeeee" I'm soooo excited.
For the project to be viable the train will have to generate $363M in annual free cashflow. Assuming a 10% margin that translates to $3.6B in revenue annually => 72.6M tickets at $50. If you figure 2 people per car, every train ticket will reduce border crossings on I-15 by 50% so the expected reduction in car crossings is 36.3M. Problem is LVCVA says the actual count for 2008 was 13.8M. Even if they are only counting one way, that's 27.6M. So their simply is not enough traffic on I-15 to support the project.
If you assume the project goes through, and 50% of the traffic on I-15 is reduced, then you have 13.8M crossings and 27.5M tickets sold so the annual revenue will be $1.4B. Free Cashflow will be about $137M. So if we remove half the cars from I-15 put them in the train, the train will lose $226M annually. The taxpayer will get soaked!
Instead of the desert express this should be called the "train to nowhereville".
This will never work just like the monorail in vegas.
Stop listening to special interests and listen to the people.
72 MILLION TICKETS...ALL THOSE FANCY NUMBERS THERE....BUT NO COMMON SENSE... WE NEED HIGH TECH IN THIS COUNTRY...ITS THE ONLY WAY OUR GREAT NATION WILL SURVIVE...IS TO STOP F-N AROUND AND GET INTO THE 21ST CENTURY..... HAPPY 4TH
WHY NOT RUN 90%OF IT ON GREEN ENERGY....???? JUST A THOUGHT