Construction Begins on High-Speed Rail Line Between SoCal and Las Vegas

The US was built with trains, it's a shame you all seemed to have abandoned them falling behind countries with much smaller GDP's . I'd love to do the Am track one day looks like a great way to see it all.

I mean, the American people didn’t abandon them. GM used monopolistic practices and corporate collusion to basically make most major cities an offer they couldn’t refuse. The gotcha, of course, is that they were being offered a “sweet deal” on a transit mode that is overall less effective for major passenger corridors in large cities, and have shorter average service lives, and use consumable parts much more heavily:
The General Motors streetcar conspiracy refers to the convictions of General Motors (GM) and related companies that were involved in the monopolizing of the sale of buses and supplies to National City Lines(NCL) and subsidiaries, as well as to the allegations that the defendants conspired to own or control transit systems, in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. This suit created lingering suspicions that the defendants had in fact plotted to dismantle streetcar systems in many cities in the United States as an attempt to monopolize surface transportation.
Between 1938 and 1950, National City Lines and its subsidiaries, American City Lines and Pacific City Lines—with investment from GM, Firestone Tire, Standard Oil of California (through a subsidiary), Federal Engineering, Phillips Petroleum, and Mack Trucks—gained control of additional transit systems in about 25 cities. Systems included St. Louis, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Oakland. NCL often converted streetcars to bus operations in that period, although electric traction was preserved or expanded in some locations. Other systems, such as San Diego's, were converted by outgrowths of the City Lines. Most of the companies involved were convicted in 1949 of conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce in the sale of buses, fuel, and supplies to NCL subsidiaries, but were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the transit industry.
- Kind of, but you also have the issue that a lot of streetcar networks were built at a loss to support land development. When these networks went bankrupt, local governments didn't really want to fund the subsidy to keep them running, so these systems either collapsed quickly or slowly.
  It is obvious that car companies pushed for cities to change in a war to accommodate cars and sell buses, but you also have the issue that a car dependent lifestyle was considered a symbol of wealth for over a generation, people wanted to move out to the suburbs, and politicians were elected to do so.
- This is fascinating! Thank you.
I’d love to do the Am track one day looks like a great way to see it all.
I have wanted to AmTrak the country for like 18 years now. The thing is it's just not an appealing experience for the cost. A trip from Florida to California would take 120 hrs/4.25 days one-way. That means that someone would need to take 9 days for a round trip if things match up perfectly. The other thing is that tickets can be quite expensive. The same trip is ~$550 one way. So, we'd have someone spending 7 vacation days and $1100 on transportation alone to sit on a train in coach for nearly the entire time without even getting to see their destination. Say you wanted to stay a week in California. There go another 5 vacation days for a total of 12 vacation days spent, with about half of them spent on a train in coach. You'd also have to add in the costs of staying and touring California, which can be fairly cheap if you know someone there or very expensive if you don't.
Very few people in the US have the time off and the financial means to make this an appealing trip.
- I made a similar comment to this several days ago.
  It takes 46 hours to go from Chicago to Seattle by train, and only 30 by car, for a difference of a whopping 16 hours. Even stopping to sleep for the night, you can get there faster driving. If you don’t get a sleeper, it’s decently cheap at like $120. But still, double the time isn’t appealing to most anyone, especially when actually comfortable accommodations for 2 days are wildly more expensive.
  I’d love to travel by train, but it’s just too slow to be practical, even if you really don’t have much going on (if you have pets, for example, that extra week for travel can really get cumbersome). If it was equivalent time to driving (or faster would be great) I think you’d see a lot more people adopting it. Even if it doesn’t replace all the air travel, to just have it cut down cross-country driving would be great. Unfortunately that means a huge investment in rail infrastructure, and a lot of time, to bring the network up to speed.
- They used to have a decently priced unlimited ticket that you could use to see the country during summer break. Get on/off the train whenever/wherever you want.
- Amtrak is really nice for medium-distance trips. I've gone from San Francisco to LA, to Seattle, to Denver. You get one overnight, no boarding hassle, can bring on a TON of luggage, and if you're a geography nerd like me you get great views of the landscapes. I work on the train when I do this, so I don't lose vacation days.

It's not the high speed corridor we need, want, or deserve, but fuck at least it's A high speed corridor. One that will presumably make a shit ton of money in both fares and casino revenues. So maybe it'll convince Americans that it's a good investment and maybe we oughtta, idk, BUILD MORE OF THEM

Hey I have a crazy idea, it's more expensive and it won't work, but I'm sure we can agree to cancel this project because of how futuristic it sounds.
I call it HyperHoops, because I was hyped when I came up with it.
No I'm not on drugs, promise.

I’m all for more trains in general, but $12 billion?? Fucking hell that’s too much money. And Las Vegas??? A city that practically and logistically-speaking should not exist? Building a zero emissions train (theoretically awesome) that goes out into the middle of the desert to a city that is warming faster than anywhere else in America, one that will only need more access to our dwindling water supply in the future, makes zero sense to me.

I’m sure people will hate me for saying this, but we should be phasing out unsustainable cities like Las Vegas, not giving them incentives to build up even more.

12 billion dollars for a train line hundreds of miles long and possibly rebuilding some bridges is pretty cheep. And it isn't like casinos waste a lot of water to run compared to other economic activities.
And, honestly, Las Vegas isn't that unsustainable except for the heat and we already have ways of dealing with it.
- Yeah, in my area, we were quoted ~$1B for a train line extension of like 10-20 miles, on largely existing track. And that's wasn't high speed rail, but light rail.
  Trains are expensive. Roads are expensive ($1.5-7.7M/mile according to this site). These costs also don't include ongoing maintenance.
  Trains usually cost more in the short term, and cost less longer term. So $12B today is expensive, but it also means we don't need expensive expansions to i-15 and can easily increase people moved by increasing the frequency of train runs.
High speed rail is expensive to build in developed and incorporated areas. That’s pretty much a universal truth, unless you get all CCP about labor and land rights.
- I mean, I'm sure there are ways to get that cheap prison labor to do some rail work. Could put gangs of them together in chains or something. Think about the profit margins!
I’m sure people will hate me for saying this, but we should be phasing out unsustainable cities like Las Vegas, not giving them incentives to build up even more.
I live in Vegas (an am partly excited about the train because, well it's a train and it will make it easier to visit family) and fully agree. This place is uninhabitable for 3 months out of the year without technological assistance (air conditioning). But I think this applies to many places both too hot and too cold. Even Southern California has no water without massive exploitation of the Colorado River. Our population is simply too much for the planet.
- Los Angeles could get all the water it needs from the Pacific Ocean with existing technology, whenever the politics requires it.
- Our population is simply too much for the planet
  That's just not true. Every time I hear this, it's assuming current technology and waste. And the estimates I've seen are all over the map:
  Debate about the actual human carrying capacity of Earth dates back hundreds of years. The range of estimates is enormous, fluctuating from 500 million people to more than one trillion. Scientists disagree not only on the final number, but more importantly about the best and most accurate way of determining that number—hence the huge variability.
  Every time we've run into issues, we've innovated our way out of it. We build dams, improve irrigation, seed clouds, desalinate water, etc. I see no reason for this to stop.
  There's probably a theoretical limit, but population growth is slowing, so I doubt we'll actually hit it. Likewise, space tech is improving, so we'll probably expand outside the planet as well, which will also result in more innovation for supporting populations on limited resources.
  For Vegas, the main concern is water. Energy is cheap and can be much cheaper, so air conditioning shouldn't be a major concern. In fact, it's probably better for people to live in deserts because that's (likely) less of a strain on wildlife vs living in forests or swamps.
I agree that Vegas shouldn't exist, but the price tag makes sense? It's in California, there are probably a lot of environmental measures that will be taken during the construction process which I fully support happening.

Project overview: https://www.brightlinewest.com/overview/project

Yea wow waste 24 years doing nothing for the common worker but for the gamblers? They get speed train!

There are 2 million people that live here and many don't have anything to do with gambling. Your comment is like calling Hawaii a bunch of surfers.
- 35% of Nevada's general fund revenue comes from gambling. 0% of Hawaii's comes from surfing.
- I mean, surfing was invented in Hawai'i and historically everyone did surf.

Cool, I hope they extend it to St. George in Utah and eventually all the way to SLC. I'd visit Vegas way more if I could just hop on a train and go.

Then send it over the rock pile into Denver!

Name it Blaine!

Not often I see a dark tower reference in the wild

Have fun with the deadliest train system out west. It kills lots of folks out in Florida.

It's deadly in Florida because people drive around the barriers at level crossings. That won't be a problem here because there won't be any level crossings.
- People actually do that? Wtf
Yeah but, I mean....Florida.
- I mean look up who owns/is heavily invested in Brightline. ..hit it's a bunch of Florida men... And they will export Florida
It is going to run in the middle of a highway median, zero railroad crossings. Have you even read any articles on it?
- I was just wondering how they were going to do a land deal to get the space to build it, but your comment explains it. Good idea.. Need to do more of that.