The grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation will help to advance the 218-mile route between Las Vegas and suburban Los Angeles, the two U.S. senators from Nevada announced Tuesday. The project, dubbed Brightline West, ranks at the top of U.S. projects that have boosted prospects for a domestic high-speed rail system.
Brightline has land, federal reviews and labor agreements in place, and company leaders say it could be built in four years. Its prospects are good, industry leaders and transportation officials say, amid renewed attention to rail in Washington and historic levels of federal funding for a national rail network that has lagged on the global stage.
“Connecting Las Vegas and Southern California by high-speed rail will create tens of thousands of good-paying union jobs, boost our Southern Nevada tourism economy, and finally help us cut down on I-15 traffic,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.) said in a statement.
Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.) said the project will be a “game changer” and called the federal aid critical to making it a reality.
Brightline and the Nevada Department of Transportation submitted a 4,000-page application in April for a $3.75 billion federal grant from the federal infrastructure law. Although the award is short of the request, it is still one of the biggest infusions of federal funding into a privately developed transportation project in modern history, while it gives Brightline an important boost to break ground in the coming months.
“We’re honored and humbled in the confidence President Biden, Secretary Buttigieg, Senator Rosen and so many others have placed in Brightline’s vision to bring true high-speed rail to America,” Wes Edens, founder and chairman of Brightline said in a statement. “This is a historic moment that will serve as a foundation for a new industry, and a remarkable project that will serve as the blueprint for how we can repeat this model throughout the country.”
In June, Brightline West received a $25 million federal grant to cover the design and construction of two stations in California.
The federal grant announced Tuesday is intended to cover nearly one-third of the project’s cost, officials said, while the company would use private capital and tax-free debt known as private activity bonds to finance the rest. Company officials had said they needed the federal funding infusion to bring the project to construction.
The 265-mile electrified rail line from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga, where it would connect to downtown Los Angeles via commuter train, is estimated to cost $12 billion — three times the price tag envisioned in the mid-2000s. The concept for a Las Vegas-to-Southern California line dates to 2005, when Las Vegas Developer Tony Marnell II pitched a bullet train to connect the city’s casinos to Victorville, 85 miles from downtown Los Angeles.
Brightline’s 2018 acquisition of the project renewed hopes for the ailing line. The company has since secured land for four stations and the right of way in the median of Interstate 15 to build high-speed tracks.
The rail line would take travelers along the median of the interstate between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga in 2 hours and 10 minutes in trains traveling at 186 mph. Supporters say the system would remove about 3 million vehicles from the road, create 35,000 jobs and increase tourism between Nevada and California.
Edens, the billionaire co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team and co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, which owns Brightline, said in an interview this summer that the project will be “the real embodiment of what high-speed rail can and should look like” in the United States and the first of many systems around the country. On Tuesday, he said the company is ready to get to work to bring “our vision of American-made, American-built, world-class, state-of-the-art high speed train travel to America.”
Brightline is aiming to time the opening of the line to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
High-speed rail advocates welcomed the news, calling the funding a transformational investment for the nation.
“The tide has turned for high-speed rail in America,” said Andy Kunz, president and chief executive of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association. He said the investment represents a milestone to help make the U.S. competitive with 26 nations that have fast, clean and safe high-speed trains.
Other high-speed projects in the works include a 500-mile system between Los Angeles and San Francisco that has been marred by delays and cost overruns. A 119-mile section is under construction, and projections call for a 171-mile segment connecting Merced, Fresno and Bakersfield to open between 2030 and 2033. Meanwhile, work is progressing on high-speed projects in the Pacific Northwest and Texas, and Amtrak is eyeing its biggest expansion in 52 years.
Brightline is the only private intercity passenger railroad in the United States. This year it expanded its Florida service to Orlando, providing a rare intercity train connection at a major airport terminal and making the trip from Miami in just over three hours. That project was an investment of nearly $6 billion.
