America’s Most Exciting High Speed Rail Project Gets $3 Billion Grant From Feds

A high-speed train from the greater Los Angeles area to Las Vegas took a big step closer to reality thanks to a $3 billion federal grant from the Department of Transportation and Joe Biden’s signature infrastructure law. 

The proposed line will be built by Brightline West, a private company owned by Fortress Investment Group (disclosure: VICE Media is owned by Fortress Investment Group). It promises to use all-electric high-speed trains that can travel up to 180 mph, which will half the travel time from Los Angeles to Las Vegas without even taking into account the terrible traffic during peak travel times. The one catch is the LA station will be in Rancho Cucamonga, about 45 miles from Union Station (it is, however, connected via Metrolink trains). The Las Vegas station is more centrally located close to the airport.

The Las Vegas to LA route is one of the great rarities of American transportation projects, in that it is both deeply sensible and reasonably priced. The route is expected to cost about $12 billion all-in for the 200-plus mile route with several new large stations, most of it running along the I-15 highway median. 

Southern California to Las Vegas is a major tourist route with tens of millions of annual trips, the vast majority of which are reluctantly done by car. A conundrum for many proposed high-speed rail routes in the U.S. is that most American cities are very car-centric, so people need a car once they get to their destination even if they take a train or plane. Las Vegas is one of the few exceptions outside the northeast, since most tourists to Vegas don’t need a car.

Brightline has experience running rail service in the U.S. Brightline Florida has been operating for five years, but completed a large route expansion this year and now goes from Orlando to Miami. This expansion has been a resounding success, with almost 80,000 passengers taking the train from Orlando to South Florida in October, a 101 percent increase in Brightline ridership from a year prior, both impressive feats considering Florida is one of the most car-dominant states in the country and little public transit infrastructure to speak of. Brightline Florida trains have a top speed of about 125 mph, comparable with the Acela route in the Northeast Corridor.

Brightline West may be the flashiest rail project in the U.S. at the moment, but it’s hardly alone. The U.S. is experiencing a modest but real resurgence in rail expansion thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In addition to Brightline West, a Raleigh-to-Richmond rail corridor received a $1 billion grant to be fit for reliable passenger service, a major boon to a region with good bones for passenger service and high demand that has become neglected and dominated by freight rail. North Carolina is experiencing record passenger rail ridership thanks to more service between Raleigh and Charlotte, two metro areas that have experienced massive population booms in recent decades and desperately need better rail service. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act is also providing tens of billions of dollars in funding to upgrade Northeast Corridor infrastructure between Washington D.C. and Boston, the nation’s busiest rail route.

The other California High Speed rail route, the one that a state authority has been trying to build for decades that will only go from Bakersfield to Merced, also received $3 billion in federal funding.