Brightline says it has raised enough money to start construction on a 200-mph rail line from Victorville, California to Las Vegas. The company projects the line will cost $10 billion, or about $45 million a mile for the 218-mile route.
Brightline in Florida. Illustration by All Aboard Florida (Brightline’s original name).
Brightline has $1 billion in private activity bonds to start construction. But I would be surprised if Brightline has managed to find private investors foolish enough to give the company the other $9 billion needed for this line. The company says that it expects to attract 12 million people a year heading to Las Vegas or Los Angeles out of their cars and buses, or almost 30 percent of the 42 million traveling by highway today, but that seems highly unlikely.
Brightline’s first problem is that it will have to charge those 12 million people an average of at least $75 a ticket for it to earn enough money to pay its operating costs as well as repay the $10 billion cost with interest. The current interest rate on private activity bonds is 4.2 percent, and if repaid over 30 years this means annual payments of $636 million, or $53 per passenger. Add in operating costs and the total is at least $75.
By comparison, bus tickets start at around $25. Someone who has $75 to spend to get to Vegas is more likely to fly, as airline tickets start at $59 on Southwest and as little as $19 on Frontier. With more than 80 nonstop flights a day each way, Brightline simply won’t be able to compete.
Brightline’s second problem is that, unlike buses and airliners, its trains won’t go from Los Angeles to Vegas; instead, they will start in Victorville, on the east side of the San Gabriel Mountains. Getting from most points in the LA area to Victorville is a 90-minute trip, whereas flights from five different Los Angeles-area airports — which means most people are within a few minutes of one of them — get to Las Vegas in only about 70 minutes.
Brightline’s third problem is speed. It claims its trains will go “up to” 200 mph, but it also admits the 218-mile trip will take 2-1/4 hours, which is an average speed of just 97 miles per hour. By comparison, the drive from Victorville to Vegas is only 187 miles and Google maps says it takes 2-3/4 hours. Since the speed limit on I-10 is 70 mph, I’m sure some people do it in 2-1/2 hours, which is 75 mph.
In other words, just about anyone who has driven a car as far as Victorville will figure they might as well take it all the way to Las Vegas, because then they will have it to use while they are in the area.
Brightline’s $10 billion cost estimate also appears unlikely. The California High Speed Rail Authority is spending a lot more than $45 million a mile building on the flat land in the central valley, and the route to Vegas is far from flat as it crosses at least two mountain ranges, one of which is over 4,000-foot high. The latest estimate is that the entire California HSR project will cost between $88 billion and $128 billion, or between $177 million and $255 million a mile, which makes Brightline’s $45 million per mile estimate appear deludedly optimistic. Of course, Brightline is likely to be a little more efficient than a government agency, but it can’t ignore the laws of physics, which say that trains must go up gentle grades with gentle curves, and building within those laws is expensive.
“We were somewhere in Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold,” wrote Hunter Thompson in what may the most famous opening line of 20th century literature. Any investor who plonks down a good portion of $9 billion to fund this desert mirage would have to be under the influence of drugs.
Brightline’s biggest accomplishment to date is that its Florida trains have killed 88 people, making it the most dangerous rail line in the United States. The company blames the victims, but the truth is most of these people died because Brightline was too cheap to put up double-wide crossing gates and fences around its right of way. Let’s hope it has at least budgeted for that in its Victorville-Vegas line.
Railroad officials were quick to blame the latest accident on the auto driver, who drove “around the gates, which were down, flashing and bells ringing, signaling an approaching train.”
Well yeah when you put it that way………it is the drivers fault. To subject them to a standard.
There’s warning signs, bells, lights and stupid people still think they can beat the train. The train weighs a thousand tons, you and your car, 2-3…. you think you can win? Please by all means try…. I’m not in favor of eugenics but even the gene pool needs a lifeguard
Drivers licenses have near decade if issuance before expiration. DMV can vastly lower the price of license acquisition but increase frequency requiring more frequent testing. Driving is as much a reading and knowledge exercise as a instintuctial one. More frequent testing is also a cognitive exercise test.
OPM. Other Peoples’ Money.
Brightline believes that they will get 3 million cars off the road.
So they’re expecting that 9 million people who would otehrwise fly, will take Brightline West.
Now here’s where things get a little weird, IMHO.
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Over 1.5 million people travel between Harry Reid International (LAS) in Las Vegas and Los Angeles International (LAX) annually on 10 different airlines.Oct 4, 2022
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Granted there’s other airports in the basin like SNA, BUR, LGB with flights to Vegas but LAX is the main one. So what are we talking for annual flights to Vegas from the Los Angeles basin? 2 million flyers? 3 million?
Pre covid Las Vegas had aorund 40 million visitors ( tourists ).
Where is Brightline West coming up with these numbers? Are we to believe that people from LA account for 1/4 – 1/3 of all Las Vegas visitors ( they’re not )? And at that Brightline West will capture 95% of them?
Feels like Brightline West has been drinking too much of grandpa’s cough syrup.
LazyReader,
By your logic, I can put a man-eating tiger on the streets of Miami with a sign around its neck saying, “Danger: Man-Eating Tiger.” Then, when someone gets eaten by it, I can say it was their own fault: they should have read the sign.
Before Brightline, these railroad crossings were used by slow freight trains that often went at night. Now they are used by frequent fast passenger trains. Brightline should have beefed up the safety measures, but it did not. As far as I’m concerned, all or nearly all of these 88 deaths are Brightline’s fault.
Come on, everyone knows the transit scam already. They have no intention on actually finishing the project. They’re just looking to collection fees and investments from governments before cancelling the project.
How can you tell if a rail promoter is lying?
He gives you a completion date.
“Our construction timeline is approximately 3.5-4 years, which would have us opening by the end of 2027,” he said.
https://bit.ly/3KQFVu9
(sfgate)
Before Brightline, these railroad crossings were used by slow freight trains that often went at night. Now they are used by frequent fast passenger trains.”
By your logic it’s the trains fault because they run. It doesn’t matter what time of day, or how frequently or what time of day. Of you try to beat a crossing…
Brightside has had 88ndwaths since its inception. While same section of I95 adjacent to it has 240 deaths….a year.
As a whole Florida has over 3000 deaths.
How can you possibly compare deaths without knowing how many passenger miles are being provided by the different forms of transportation?
As a guess, I suspect that I95 probably carries at least a thousand times the passenger miles as does the train. When looked at in that light, your death numbers comparison doesn’t look so good.
It’s good to recognize that these people have agency, that they’re often making poor choices. But that doesn’t change the moral obligation we have to reduce deaths and injuries.