D. Dowd MuskaEditor’s note: This is excerpted with permission from the Pacific Research Institute’s Right by the Bay blog.
It’s happening. This time, it’s really happening.
That’s what dignitaries at the pseudo-event told themselves on April 22, 2024 — the day Brightline West “officially broke ground on the nation’s first true high-speed rail system.”
Bureaucrats, politicians, and civic leaders predicted nothing but sunshine for the long-sought HSR route linking Southern California and Las Vegas. U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg praised “one of the very best examples of America’s infrastructure comeback.” U.S. Rep. Jay Obernolte, R-Calif., extolled a “convenient alternative to driving [that] will reduce the number of cars on the road, decreasing emissions and reducing congestion in our High Desert communities.” U.S. Senator Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., swooned over “the beginning of a new era for southern Nevada.”
Twenty-eight months later, Brightline West looks more and more like yet another SoCal-to-Sin City dead end. Delays, an enormous cost overrun and a looming financial calamity for an affiliated railroad threaten doom. Consequences of a flameout would be cruel to both taxpayers and investors.
Brightline West’s boosters are probably shocked by the reversal of fortune. Veteran transportation researchers aren’t. HSR connecting greater Los Angeles and Las Vegas has always been more razzle-dazzle than brass tacks. In 1988, Sacramento and Carson City created the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission (CNSSTC). Two years later, eight commissioners journeyed — at taxpayer expense — to France and Germany, for a firsthand look at how Europeans were progressing with state-of-the-art passenger rail.
The CNSSTC granted Bechtel a “conditional franchise” to build a magnetic-levitation line from Anaheim to Las Vegas. The construction firm, then based in San Francisco, submitted the only bid, the Los Angeles Times reported, because “Morrison-Knudsen and Bombardier Corp. … pulled out of the competition, saying that the lack of public financing for environmental planning made the project ‘excessively risky’ to would-be financial backers.”
The years dragged on, funding was not found, and Bechtel bailed.
Find out how the story ends here.
D. Dowd Muska is a researcher and writer who studies public policy from the limited-government perspective. A veteran of several think tanks, he writes a column and publishes other content at No Dowd About It.
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I loved trains when I was little. I had a bunch of them in my basement. They probably worked better than the one California proposes.
In any event, I grew up.
California: Grow Up. Remember Californians it’s your tax dollars the elites in Sacramento are shuffling through and dealing out to the contractors.
I was hopeful this line would come to fruition. The airport experience on both ends is horrible and the drive to Las Vegas can be brutal on weekends. However, for anybody on the eastern end of the LA basin, there is no time advantage to flying vs driving except for going to Vegas Friday evening and returning Sunday afternoon. A train offering a time advantage or even a match of non-peak driving time (3.5 hours for me) should have some appeal.
The problem isn’t the concept, it’s the burden of everything that is not the project driving up the costs. Environmental reviews, FRA requirements, local permitting and reviews, labor agreements that increase cost, layer upon layer of managers and directors, etc.. These all drive costs upward for little or no improvement in the project. Passenger rail has its place, like everything, but it’s not for everywhere. This seemed like a logical opportunity.
Even with all the cost overruns, the project is still a lot less than the ongoing costs of maintaining California’s road and highway network, so it’s rather ridiculous to complain about that. The real problem is the delays, and the biggest factor is probably legal battles around acquiring the land.