The Route 66 town of Victorville, Calif., is close to landing a $4.9 billion federal loan that would build a 150 mph bullet train line from there to Las Vegas, according to The Daily Mail and other news outlets.
The newspaper said about the DesertXpress propoal:
The vast park-and-ride project hinged on the untested idea that car-loving Californians will drive about 100 miles from the Los Angeles area, pull off busy Interstate 15 and board a train for the final leg to the Vegas strip.
Planners imagine that millions of travelers a year will one day flock to a station outside Victorville, a small city where shuttered storefronts line the historic downtown. […]
Victorville Mayor Ryan McEachron envisions a bustling transportation oasis with a hotel, restaurants, maybe even homes, on the proposed station site. […]
The plan was being advanced by casino developer and contractor Anthony Marnell II, whose credits include building the Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas.
He heads Marnell Companies, the majority shareholder in DesertXpress. […]
The parking lot in Victorville has room for 15,000 cars. At peak hours, trains would depart every 20 minutes. Mack said an average round-trip fare could be as low as $75, though documents estimated $100.
A decision on whether to give a go-ahead on the plan is expected later in the year.
It’s 180 miles from Victorville to Las Vegas. A high-speed train could traverse that distance through harsh desert and steep mountains in 90 minutes or less.
I’m agnostic about this proposal, although there’s little doubt it would help Victorville.
One person quoted in the story was skeptical about whether people would drive their cars so they could park, then ride a train. However, skeptics should note that the New Mexico Rail Runner Express, which goes from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, has seen a lot of ridership and is expanding its weekend service. And park-and-ride behavior is common with MetroLink lines in St. Louis and with the Chicago Transit Authority.
With the rising cost of fuel and ever-present traffic problems along Interstate 15, perhaps the time has come for a high-speed train to Vegas.
As an Angelino that loves trains but doesn’t go to Vegas, and knows a lot of people that want HSR (high speed rail) to Vegas, this will never work. It needs to leave somewhere nearer to Los Angeles on a regular Friday – Monday schedule to be effective. This proposal is a great step, but until HSR connects LA to LV, it’s not overly productive. This is especially true as HSR comes to LA in the next 10 years or so, connecting to SD and SF and eventually SF.
One of the first things I thought of when I saw this post was bulleting the other way. Las Vegas has historically been one of the cheaper places to fly to from the mid-west. There are often some really attractive deals which I’ve always assumed come from the casinos’ desires to get some of our butter and egg money into the slot machines. It’s hard to say how well it would work in practice but it seems possible that a bullet train to Victorville — or LA — might make hopping through Las Vegas to reach California and the western bit of Route 66 worth looking at for someone in, say, Cincinnati or Indianapolis. Of course, a high priced train would instantly nullify a cheap plane.
One of the things about HSR in CA as it is being built / studied currently is that it is inexpensive as a rider. The tentative fare for LA to SF is $50 and will take under 3 hours. It’s at least 6 hours to drive. And flying is only about an hour but does not factor getting to and from the airport at each end (neither airport is immediately adjacent to downtown but both rail stations are) and getting through security.
I wonder, though, Denny, that even if the rate is really good on the train, will the rental car prices in Victorville be that much less than in Vegas to warrant even taking the train? With all of the extra taxes and fees that are imposed in CA it may not make any sense.
Yeah, car rental rates and other details can often turn good ideas into bad ones and this idea (getting to California Route 66 by flying to Las Vegas) wasn’t all that good to start with.
I’m trying to keep my lip zipped on this one – but just where did we come up with an extra $4.9 billion to play with in the first place??? Bullet Train, speed and convenience, hmmm – how did Route 66 get bypassed the 1st time around? Fly to Vegas, then high-speed to the L.A. area, and just bypass all the rest of Route 66? Oh yeah – I was supposed to zip it!
There is NO MONEY! When are we going to stop spending what we don’t have?
RT and Zmannw…I’m glad you said it…I was thinking the same thing. $4.9 BILLION! Yikes!
Tell me there is some other reason for having this train other than to allow those in LA to get to Vegas to gamble faster. Please reassure me we are not borrowing that $4.9 B from China. Please confirm for me that this is, in fact, the most urgent need for high speed rail, or any other form of mass transit, in America today.
Not to mention the continued failed U.S. proposition to start out as one of the slowest HSR trains @ 150mph, when most around the world at least approach or exceed 200mph average speed, and top out at over 300mph. Part of the successful equation is to compete with air travel times, while being more cost effective and carrying far more passengers per trip? It already sounds like a government run, tax payer money pit, much like Amtrak already is? Oops – better zip it!
Please know I’m generally in favor of just about anything positive for Route 66 – it’s just in this case, I’m not so sure it’s positive or good for Route 66 in general?
I believe that the topics that you and others are now discussing are completely irrelevant to the relationship of this original post and Route 66. I for one am in favor of the IDEA of HSR within California. This particular line, however, I have not done any research / reading on and therefore cannot comment on it. Denny seems to be the only one above that has actually related this topic to Route 66 directly and for that I commend him. For me, I think that the best connection I can make between HSR from LV to Victorville and 66 would be that the Victorville HSR station would likely be directly across the street from the California Route 66 Museum in Victorville and perhaps it could boost traffic at the museum while people are awaiting their HSR train’s departure.
Possibly bypassing the rest of Route 66 to get to California’s Route 66 via Las Vegas as mentioned above – IS – directly related to the rest of us on Route 66, or any bypassing there of! It doesn’t seem that way to you, because you live there…