Brightline West, a future electric high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Los Angeles, broke ground today in Nevada.
On December 6, 2023, Electrek reported that the Biden administration awarded Brightline West $3 billion in funding. The money was part of $6 billion previously earmarked for high-speed rail, and came from the Biden administration’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law as part of its Federal-State Partnership Program. (The other $3 billion will go to the public high-speed Los Angeles to San Francisco rail project, which has more than 100 miles of a high-speed line under construction.)
Brightline West will be a privately owned, 218-mile, all-electric high-speed rail service that will include a flagship station in Las Vegas (pictured above), with additional stations in Apple Valley, Hesperia, and Rancho Cucamonga. At speeds of more than 186 miles per hour, trains will take passengers from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga, which is 37 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, in just 2 hours and 10 minutes – twice as fast as the normal drive time.
Florida-based Brightline Holdings is expected to model the Las Vegas-LA rail line on its high-speed route between Miami and Orlando – the US’s only privately owned and operated intercity passenger railroad.
Brightline West estimates it will remove 3 million cars from I-15 annually, reducing over 400,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. It also anticipates creating an astounding 35,000 union jobs. The federal funding will enable the project, which is aiming to open by 2028, to begin construction.
Rick Harnish, executive director of the national nonprofit High Speed Rail Alliance, said today:
This is a transformational investment in American trains.
Getting a high-speed line in operation this decade will show Americans this terrific way to travel. If you have ever felt frustrated by traffic gridlock or airport hassles, a better future just got closer.
Top comment by Jonathan Combs
I just got back from Spain, which has an incredible high-speed rail system. We took 7 trains while there, all of them on time and very comfortable.
The process is simple: make reservations in advance (a must), show up about a half hour before departure, clear security (the lines were never long), put your luggage on a rack, plug in your electronics, sign into the free wifi, and relax while the train whisks you to your next destination at 180+ mph far more smoothly than planes or cars. When you get to your destination, you won't be 10 miles from town--you'll be in town because the train stations are usually in the center.
And it's cheap...really cheap. We wound up skipping a trip we had planned in favor of a tour. A trip that would have taken an hour and a half by car (rental+gas+parking), would have taken 28 minutes by train and cost us $22 per person for 2nd class. In all, we visited 6 different cities in comfort, without the stress of driving, and far more quickly than air travel. If this LA-LV route is a success, maybe Americans will start to see the benefits of high-speed rail travel.
A side note: People have been referring to diesel locomotives in referencing the motive power used by US railroads. Most modern locomotives are actually diesel-electrics (hybrids), the diesel engine running an alternator which supplies electric power to motors on the trucks.
Read more: The US’s busiest rail corridor just got a $16.4B boost – why that’s huge
Photos: Brightline West
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