LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Brightline West construction should begin within the next two months, a Nevada Department of Transportation official said today (Monday, Feb. 10, 2025).
KLAS-TV reports that Eric Scheetz, Nevada DOT senior project manager, told a meeting of the NDOT board of directors that the agency must have proof that Brightline West has financing in place before construction of the Las Vegas-Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., high-speed route can begin.
Brightline West and the Federal Railroad Administration have already signed off on a $3 billion grant awarded in December 2023 [see “FRA finalizes …,” Trains News Wire, Sept. 26, 2024]. The company is also currently offering $2.5 billion in private activity bonds authorized by the U.S. Department of Transportation [see “Brightline West now expecting to launch …,” News Wire, Jan. 26, 2025]. The rest of the money will come through private funding, including loans.
“Literally, stuff is changing by the minute,” Scheetz told the board. “We’re hearing good responses from Brightline that the banks are becoming very close to signing on the dotted line, if you will.”
Scheetz told the board that the structure of the federal grant agreement requires Brightline West to spend money on the project, then receive reimbursement. “The nice part is we are not actually outlaying any state funds from that,” he said. “We are just making sure … they produce what they say they will, and then they’re allowed to be reimbursed for it.”
He also said the $12 billion project is broken into nine regional contracts, which reduces risk: “If there’s an issue with one contractor, it’s nice to know you can pull on another contractor and make sure everything gets finished properly.”
Once it begins, construction will take about three years, Scheetz said. Brightline West had been aiming to begin operations in time for the Los Angeles Olympics in summer 2028, but documents related to the private activity bond offering indicate December 2028 is now the target.
@ Charles: Have you actually researched how they are going add a lane during construction? This will allow a 3/4 lane for construction equipment to come and go safely and an outer full lane for shifted traffic.
Well, that’s good news. It hasn’t been reported in any article in Trains.com. Now it makes a lot more sense. Obviously John had I known that, I’d have felt differently and posted differently.
A total reconstruct of I-15 is a whole different undertsanding than anything I read on these pages. Even so, I believe the best solution would have been a parallel route, not the median.
For all that, I continue to doubt both the financing and the construction schedule. It’s too big a project (freeway and railroad both) to be done in less than four years. Hard to believe CalTrans and NDOT would do the entire length simultaneoulsy, no matter how many contractors are hired for the various segments. As each one segment would take years to build, it pretty much sould mean one long construction zone the entire length. Gruesome. It would be as if the Illinois Tollway were reconstructed simultaneously all the way from the Wisconsin border to the Indiana border. Who would want to drive that construction zone?
Dodgy financing, even assuming the Trump administration honors the commitment of the previous administration. Smoke and mirrors.
CalTrans is hopeless, but if I’m NDOT, there would be so much in the way of bonding and insurance (for construction in and along a state highway) that this project would go nowhere. If a contractor works in my house, he needs to be bonded in case he causes damage to my property. Well, freeways can also be damaged by contractors.
If I had to guess, I would guess that both states will forgo compensation for closing lanes on a freeway that’s said to be hopelessly congested with all lanes open to traffic. In a fair world (unlike the one we live in) Brightline’s liability for what is called “lane rental” — compensation for so and so many traffic lanes closed for so and so many hours — would be enough to kill the project. Build the d….ed thing somewhere other than a freeway median. It doesn’t belong there. Enough can go wrong maintaining the freeway itself. Much more can go wrong turning the freeway median into a railroad.
Sorry all you proponents of this project, I am opposed. One crash in a freeway work zone is one too many. I have read traffic crash reports. At the bottom of the form, there’s that line where it says, “Deputy Notified Family”.
There will always be traffic crashes on high-speed freeways, including fatalities. Don’t go out of you way to cause more of them.