High-speed train travel to Las Vegas gains steam

Two proposals are vying for funds for a high-speed train route.

LAS VEGAS (AP) — It’s been hailed as the future of mass transit and ridiculed as a big gamble on little more than an amusement park ride. That is a pretty clever insult, considering the project in question is a magnetically levitating train that would speed tourists from Las Vegas to Disneyland.

Whether the idea ever gets off the drawing board depends on both Congress and the fate of a rival train project that appears to be picking up steam.

“What all of this shows is that there’s certainly a need for high-speed rail, an interest in high-speed rail. We’re finally getting the attention,” said Alan Wapner, a member of the Ontario, Calif., City Council who also sits on the commission pushing for what would be the nation’s first MagLev train. “It’s time the United States wake up and realize that we need to develop alternative technologies.”

The dueling plans are competing for a big piece of the tourism industry: Ten million Southern Californians make the 250-plus-mile drive to Las Vegas each year. The vast majority take an increasingly clogged Interstate 15 that can slow to a crawl and make the drive an ordeal of five hours or more.

For nearly two decades, the main plan in the works was the futuristic MagLev train that would zip riders between Sin City and the Magic Kingdom in well under two hours, hurtling across the wide-open desert at up to 300 mph.

But a delay in federal funds needed for planning the public-private venture has suddenly given traction to a cheaper diesel-electric alternative dubbed DesertXpress.

The privately funded DesertXpress would whisk riders to Las Vegas at 125 mph from the Mojave Desert town of Victorville, Calif., some 11⁄2 hours northeast of Los Angeles. Total travel time, including the drive to Victorville: three or four hours.

Backers of DesertXpress, among them Nevada GOP powerbroker Sig Rogich, are pouring millions into their project and courting Nevada lawmakers, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., a longtime supporter of MagLev.

The most recent delay to afflict the Anaheim-to-Vegas MagLev plan was a drafting error that blocked $45 million the project was supposed to get in Congress’ 2005 highway bill. Legislation to correct the error cleared the House last year and is awaiting passage in the Senate, where it has been tied up by unrelated issues.

If it gets the financial boost, the MagLev project plans to issue bonds and seek government loans.