By Gabby Birenbaum
Almost every Sunday evening for the past two decades, thousands of tourists from Southern California have sat in their cars in a slow-moving, 17-mile traffic backup on I-15 on their way back from a Las Vegas weekend, and said to themselves, “There has to be a better way.”
At various points over that twenty-year period, a high-speed rail line has been proposed as a fix for the time it takes to travel between the two entertainment capitals. It’s a project that has both invigorated and frustrated developers and lawmakers — routes have been proposed and extended, environmental assessments completed and then made to sit stagnant, and federal funds have been promised and then never materialized — as multiple companies have tried to turn the transportation dream into an approved reality.
But now, after years of promises, a groundbreaking might happen.
The Nevada congressional delegation is backing an application from Brightline West and the Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) for $3.75 billion to build a high-speed rail line from outside of Los Angeles to Las Vegas, hoping the infusion of federal funds can get construction on the long-awaited project underway this year.
Successful completion of the proposed line would represent an end to nearly 20 years of developer and governmental interest. Work first began in 2005, but a combination of insufficient public funds, permitting holdups and congressional backlash kept construction from ever beginning, despite the support of public figures as powerful as former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and multiple generations of the Marnell family, leaders in casino development.
But Brightline, which already opened and operates the country’s only private intercity passenger railroad in South Florida, has brought the project closer to reality. The land and right-of-way acquisitions, construction readiness assessments and project-labor agreements are all in place. The environmental permitting process, where big infrastructure projects can get held up for years, is expected to conclude in July, with an initial positive outlook from the Federal Rail Administration.
Tina Quigley, the former CEO of the Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada, has spent decades dreaming of and working toward a functioning rail line to ease traffic on the I-15 corridor, including a brief stint working for Virgin Trains USA in late 2019.
“What a total gift to those of us who care about capacity and infrastructure to have a private company that is doing all the heavy lifting to get this thing moving,” Quigley, now president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, said in an interview.
The last major piece needed in the transportation puzzle is funding — a major hurdle for the proposed line and other past projects, particularly given the lack of predictable, dedicated funding from the federal government, which has given rail the short shrift as administrations have prioritized highways, roads and airports in the post-World War Two period.
Even if the application is approved, the line is expected to be funded primarily through private investment, but the calculations somewhat shifted after passage of the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which authorized $36 billion in advance appropriations for the Federal-State Partnership for Intercity Passenger Rail program, with a portion of those funds carved out for projects outside of the Northeast Corridor, where most of the country’s rail operations are concentrated.
“Prior to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, money available for trains was peanuts — maybe a couple of peanuts, not even a handful,” said Rick Harnish, director of the High Speed Rail Alliance, a high-speed rail advocacy group. “As a result of the bill, there’s now a bowl full.”
Brightline projects it will raise the requisite capital to begin construction this summer, with an ambitious three-and-a-half-to-four year construction timeline centered on a goal of beginning operations before the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
This year, more than $4.5 billion is available in grant funding for projects outside of the Northeast Corridor — the funding pot to which Brightline West is applying.
The project faces competition from California High Speed Rail (CHSR), the oft-delayed rail project intended to connect Los Angeles with San Francisco, though ballooning costs and the glacial pace of progress have made it a target of criticism and emblematic of the challenges facing the broader high-speed rail movement. CHSR is applying for $2.8 billion, forcing the federal government to choose between fully funding the rail projects.
In their letter to the Department of Transportation (DOT), Nevada’s six members of Congress and four California House members asked for expeditious funding of Brightline West’s application.
Michael Naft, a Clark County commissioner who has advocated for a train since his days as a district director for Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV), believes Brightline’s application is the most competitive one in the West. If approved, he said the grant would provide the final push needed to get shovels into the ground.
“This isn’t something that’s just kind of sketched on a piece of paper,” Naft said. “The design work is done, entitlements are done, the land use is done. They are largely ready to get people to work and move quickly toward helping solve a real transportation problem in a struggling corridor in the West.”
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