LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Virgin Trains USA’s plans for rail service between Los Angeles and Las Vegas have been delayed, likely for at least two years, after the company failed to secure tax abatements from the Nevada legislature.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal quotes Bob O’Malley, Virgin Trains’ vice president of governmental affairs, as saying the company would “reevaluate the timeline” after failing to receive the abatements. “Abatements are a crucial component of the financing package,” he said, “so without it I don’t think [construction will start].”
O’Malley said the company was not seeking tax credits or state grants, but partial abatements of sales and property taxes similar to those it received in Florida. He said the company would try again to secure the abatements during the next legislative session in 2021.
lol
Why should Virgin pay property tax on tracks when the interstates (that consume more land) are tax free?
It’s 1 hr 10 minutes gate-to-gate from Orange County (John Wayne Airport) to Las Vegas. I can leave my house and be at a hotel in Vegas in under 3 hours by plane. The drive can be anywhere from 3-1/2 hours with no traffic to 6-1/2 hours with a lot of traffic and a wreck or two (pretty common in afternoons and holidays). If I drive to Victorville, I may as well drive all the way to Vegas.
To succeed, you would need a service that is fast, reliable, and convenient. I think anything over 5 hours from OC or through LA is a no-go. Reliable schedule is an oxymoron with BNSF, UP, Amtrak and Metrolink. Convenient means the largest demographic groups need easy to get to, easy to park terminals. LAUPT will only meet that need for a very small population. Convenient stations would need to serve:
• South Bay and West Side of LA suburbs (ie: Redondo Beach, Santa Monica): there is no heavy rail service there and it would cost billions to build it – even if elevated.
• San Fernando Valley. You could tie in with existing UP/Metrolink lines, but you’ve got to avoid the LAUPT/Mission Tower. Then connect to the Metrolink San Bernardino Line. UP through the Valley has minimal freight service and is owned by Metrolink anyway.
• Orange County – Anaheim and Irvine. Tie in with existing BNSF/Metrolink OC and Riverside Lines. No way will BNSF allow that once you get onto their tracks at the north end of the Olive Sub.
• Inland Empire. Only feasible route is Metrolink San Bernardino Line (because of comment above about BNSF and Riverside Line). The closer you get to the I-15 and north of the I-10, the faster the rail service will need to be to competer.
From Metrolink San Bernardino Line, create an all-new ROW/track all the way to Vegas. No way will BNSF allow a private operator onto its line up to Daggett, and even in UP’s PSR mania to maximize asset return it won’t allow a private operator at reasonable schedules with reasonable guarantees of on-time on the old LA&SL at any sort of reasonable cost.
The only Virgin Air connection – if that was a direct transfer – would occur at Hollywood-Burbank airport (a small, local airport) or Ontario Airport (shuttle to San Bernardino Line). Ontario has very limited flights and has not proven successful: doubt that Virgin Air could make that work. So there needs to be packages with a lot of convenient connectivity. Southern California just isn’t set up very well for that.
I just don’t see a feasible, Brightline-type option available in this market. The real estate plays have already been made, so the upside there is nominal, unlike Florida. San Bernardino (or Ontario) would need to be on an all-new ROW. Forget the West Side as noted above. And all of the operations on Metrolink tracks would need a major paradigm shift from Metrolink.
It makes more sense if the business model is that the train is part of a canned holiday. In this case I can see (kind of) a Victorville terminal. Virgin Group is not expecting to make money on the train, operating it is just part of the cost of doing business.
However if the objective is to get people from LA to Sin City via Hollywierd and/or Orange County (or perhaps a cruise to nowhere from Long Beach, it makes sense to have shuttles from the various destinations to an aggregation point, but it also makes more sense for this aggregation point to be San Bernardino rather than Victorville. But I presume they have studied this, have looked at this idea, and have discarded it for whatever reason.
I do hope they will allow locals to ride their service. If so, perhaps Metrolink could be persuaded to extend service from San Bernardino to Victorville. That would make it worthwhile.
Duguð sê uppan [comments] boda [generic] nêar of nêah hîwr¯æden lôca in drohtian hnot m¯ægwlite wægn underlecgan êac ealdgenîðla [attorney/client] cýððu. Man æfnan nâteshwôn [constitute] æwlic ðeaht. Yfel [am] nâteðæshwôn êower [attorney]. ðurhtêon êower ofersittan forscêadan rihtscrîfend.
Virgin Group is looking to link the LV train service with a new Virgin Hotel/Casino along with Virgin Atlantic flights from the UK.
It would be a total package. fly to LA on Virgin Atlantic, stay in a Virgin property, do Disney, Hollywood or a Virgin Cruise. Or you could take the express bus shuttle to Victorville, board Virgin Trains and get whisked to Las Vegas. (Better yet, take an air shuttle over to White Sands and ride on Virgin Galactic!)
Remember that Virgin Trains USA is buying into the notion that Brightline started. Trains are just the means, the money is in the real estate. And Las Vegas is a great place for a real estate play. The trains are just to get the tourists there, not necessarily the locals.
Euro tourists love buying “all in one” travel packages where everything is included. Orlando Sanford Airport is full of Thomas Cook and other UK based charters bringing over discount Disney junkets. Virgin Group just wants to take it to the next level.
Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. Not counting the Desert Wind, there have been several attempts to start an LA-LV service, none of which have really come to fruition.
I’m not sure why. Given the traffic on I-15 you would think that there would be sufficient people who want to go to Sin City from the LA area to warrant passenger rail service, but for some reason or another the numbers just don’t seem to be there. Pity, that.
.eceiphtuom nmad nwo rouy dniF .yenrotta ruoy ton ma I .ecivda lagel etutitsnoc ton od yehT .pihsnoiraler tneic\yenrotta na rof sisab eht mrof ton od dna erutan ni lereneg era stenmmoc evoba ehT
Mister Landey:
I looked it up, driving from LA to LV is five hours and change, some sources say four, and a distance of about 260 miles.
This means to compete on speed the train will have to have an average speed of 50 mph including stops. I’ll give it an hour extra but this still means it will have to step out wherever it can. This means in turn that the hosting railroad will have to have Class 4 track, or as much of it as they can get.
It takes about two hours to fly to Vegas, three if you include airport security (theatre), and then you need to get to the airport at either end The cost ranges from $80-$100 dollars.
So in order to be competitive the service will have to be in the five hour end-to-end range, and a coach seat will have to cost about a hundred dollars.
All this is a tall order, especially when you include transiting Cajon Pass … a bottleneck by any other name. I can see the attraction of running from Victorville to Las Vegas but as remarked earlier, by the time you hit Victorville you are mentally already in Sin City, running on autopilot, and I don’t know anyone who has lost anything recently in Victorville anyway. The service has to start at LAUPT and go straight through as an express (with limited stops in the San Gabriel valley and San Bernardino).
Does anyone beside you miss the Pasadena Sub? You betcha. I grew up with that thing. I have even used the Pasadena station both as a passenger facility and as a Railway Express facility. It was a sad day when ATSF discontinued service. Sic transit gloria transitus.
?????? ???? ?? ?????? ???? ??? ?????? ?? ????? ?????? ???? ??? / ????. ?? ???? ?????? ????? ?????. ??? ?? ???? ???? ???. ??? ?? ???? ???? ????? ???.
A proposal that never made any sense in the least. If it can’t start at LAUPT (not only a population center but great rail connections) what’s the point of it? None, it seems. “Postponed” will mean “Dropped”.
Here’s a questions for the Californians: Am I the only one who misses the ATSF line through Pasadena? It seems the remaining ATSF line and the UPRR line could use some relief right ’bout now.
Union Pacific isn’t the only carrier through Cajon Pass. BNSF also has a presence. But I suspect they are equally as willing (which is to say not at all) to host another passenger train.
If this service is to have any chance of success it has to start at Union Station in Los Angeles. I can see a stop somewhere in the San Gabriel Valley, and another stop in either San Bernardino or Victorville…but aside from those two, it should be an express. It does after all have to compete with I-15 and I have to agree that although the weekend traffic on 15 can be a drag and an abomination, by the time you hit Victorville it’s what-the-hey time, and why not drive on through?
This also means it will need extra power to get over the Cajon Pass. Perhaps a stop in both San Bernardio and Victorville? But the stops should be kept to a minimum. Does anyone know how long it takes to couple on and qualify an additional locomotive for a passenger train?
And Mister Kayganich…I beg to differ with you, Sir. I agree that I mis-spelled tneilc, but it should still read tneilc\yenrotta. Just sayin’.
.eceiphtuom nmad nwo rouy dniF .yenrotta ruoy ton ma I .ecivda lagel etutitsnoc ton od yehT .pihsnoiraler tneilc\yenrotta na rof sisab eht mrof ton od dna erutan ni lereneg era stenmmoc evoba ehT
Jf Turcotte, the only “obstacle” in the way of this whole thing is Union Pacific. They are the ones who would have the final say in the project. That is if Virgin Trains wants to use existing track routes.
It’s not just the LA people they want, they also want people out of the valley.
Excuse me… pihsnoitaler
Anna you meant tneilc/phisnoitaler
The traffic on I-15 is miserable between Victorville and the state line. Even so,if I were silly enough to want to go to LV, and I’d packed up the car and gotten myself to Victorville, I think I’d rough it out in the car the rest of the way rather than unpacking and reloading onto a train. Much as I love trains.
Seems to me that a service originating in Victorville would have very little appeal to LA citizen travelling to Las Vegas. Once you’ve climbed Cajon Pass, is there any significant obstacle left on the way to Sin City?