Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Sun editorial:

Maglev in the running

High-tech train system’s planners vow to go forward, despite competing system

A proposal for moving passengers between Las Vegas and Anaheim, Calif., features a maglev train that would flow powerfully, cleanly and silently — no friction, no moving parts — on a cushion of air at 300 mph.

Representatives of the American Magline Group, a coalition of companies partnering to build the proposed low-maintenance maglev system, say it would be built entirely in California and Nevada, creating thousands of local jobs.

All that would be imported, by way of a licensing agreement between the German company that developed the technology and the American companies that would build it, is the engineering and construction knowledge.

There would also be immense long-term benefits for Las Vegas. As Anaheim is a major destination, owing to Disneyland, and close to other population centers, more tourists would come from Southern California.

In the future, aspirations now under discussion could result in the magnetic levitation system being expanded to major cities in Arizona and all the way to the East Coast, enabling more tourists to come from that direction and opening new travel options for Southern Nevadans.

These are some of the reasons why we were glad to learn that American Magline Group officials said Monday night that they were going to “continue no matter what” on their plans to build the Las Vegas-Anaheim route.

Speaking at UNLV, the officials said they would proceed with their plans even if a rival group succeeds in getting a more traditional — steel wheels on rails — train system called DesertXpress built between Las Vegas and Victorville, Calif.

Las Vegas Sun reporter Richard N. Velotta quoted Neil Cummings, president of the American Magline Group, as saying, “I’d have no problem building our train alongside it (DesertXpress) and put them out of business.” Our view is that the privately funded DesertXpress, which would move at only half the speed of a maglev, would have little value principally because Victorville — more than an hour’s drive northeast of Los Angeles — is not a destination for either business or leisure travel.

We believe that a maglev system, built with private and public money, could transform Las Vegas over the next decades, while DesertXpress would have little or no effect.

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