LAS VEGAS, Nev. — Agencies in California and Nevada have issued private activity bonds for the Brightline West project, a key element in funding the 218-mile high-speed rail venture between Las Vegas and Southern California.
It is not clear whether the start of construction is contingent on obtaining money from the combined $2.5 billion in bonds offered by the California Infrastructure and Development Bank and Nevada’s Department of Business and Industry. The bonds, now being evaluated by institutional investors, are just one component in financing the $12.4 billion project, along with federal and state grants and loans.
Bond documents did acknowledge that the system would not meet its previously expressed goal of completion in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics [see “Brightline West now expecting to launch …..,” News Wire Jan. 26, 2025].
Nevertheless, shovels-in-the-ground work is poised to begin. The destination for the project’s first phase is a Metrolink Station-parking garage complex to be built at Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., about 42 miles from Los Angeles Union Station on the commuter operator’s ex-Santa Fe San Bernardino line.
Tracks between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga will generally be positioned in the median of Interstate 15. The highway features steep ascending and descending grades of up to 6% at several locations, including a path following I-15’s northbound lanes up and over Cajon Pass. Because the plan promises to push the limits of worldwide 220-mph rail construction standards and operation to new extremes, Trains News Wire recently followed the route for a look at some of its noteworthy features.
Las Vegas station
Last spring, the company held a ceremonial groundbreaking off of South Las Vegas Boulevard at Robindale Road, south of the Warm Springs interchange [see “Brightline West groundbreaking hailed …,” News Wire, April 22, 2024]. As seen below on Jan. 17, 2025, a billboard facing I-15 had been placed in front of vacant land. The building and platforms will angle to the right of the sign; the control tower of Harry Reid International Airport is visible in the distance. A facility housing the airport’s rental car operations (now far from the terminals) is set to be built near distant buildings visible to the left of the sign. Rental cars will thus be within a shorter shuttle distance to the Brightline station than the airport.
Cactus Avenue along I-15
Vehicle Maintenance Facility, Sloan, Nev.
Geothermal soil samples were taken in November 2024, on land near I-15 at Sloan, Nev., about 10 miles south of the station, where Brightline West’s Vehicle Maintenance Facility will be located. Testing has now been completed, clearing the way for site preparation and construction. Reconfiguration of the highway’s southbound lanes will permit a track to branch off from the main line in the median toward the facility. This location is also near Union Pacific’s Salt Lake City-Los Angeles rail line, from which materials and Siemens trainsets could be delivered. The light-colored horizontal embankment visible in the background supports UP’s tracks.
Yates Well Road
Single track will be initially deployed on about 90% of the route, with double track strategically positioned to accommodate hourly departures in both directions. While top speeds approaching 200 mph are possible here, 15 miles of curving roadway and heavy grades into California will necessarily limit speeds. Further west, there are other stretches where the road is straight but rises and falls on 4% grades.
Barstow BNSF and Main Street
Cajon Pass at California Route 138 and Silverwood Lake
Coming down the south side of Cajon Pass in the narrow median, Brightline West trains would twist through a series of reverse curves on a 6% grade before hitting their stride on a straightaway toward San Bernardino. Northbound trainsets would have a much tougher slog here compared to the ruling 2.2% grade encountered on nearby tracks over Cajon traversed by Amtrak’s Southwest Chief and a host of BNSF and Union Pacific freights.
Transition off I-15
Rancho Cucamonga station
Recent policy changes by the new Trump administration may have introduced an element of uncertainty, but Brightline utilized the same financing strategy during the Trump’s first term to launch its Florida operation. This project’s scope — and potential investment and mobility return — is far greater.
Oh, so that’s what’s considered “a wide median”? If the photo is representative of much of the route, it looks like a normal 50-foot or so freeway median. Are we talking about one track or two? Two tracks would be a very tight squeeze. One track or two, you have to change the drainage the entire length of the median. What happens if there is the pier of an overpass in the median? Then there’s the construction issue. Really do you want tens of thousands of arrivals and departures of dump trucks, excavators, transit mix trucks, rigs for building the rail infrastructure, etc. etc. in the median shoulder? This on a freeway that Brightline West proponents insist is so overburdened with cars and trucks that a passenger railroad is needed.
Then you have the issue of traffic clear zone. I don’t know the clear zone for an Interstate Highway at whatever the speed limit, but call it for discussion purposes 30 feet, or about 18 more feet inside of the two inside of the existing inside shoulders. So unless you have a continuous concrete barrier, the 50-foot median is reduced to about 14 feet, in approximate terms, unless a continuous concrete barrier is installed on each side the entire length. On a freeway, a concrete barrier is not considered a safety feature, but an unfortunate necessity. An obstacle-free runoff clear zone of, say 30-feet, is considered safer, to say nothing of a whole lot cheaper.
As this is HSR, you need continuous fencing, not a pleasant feature if a train needs to be evacuated or if emergency responders need to access the track from the freeway.
I’m sorry if I’m the only one, folks. Brightline West has earned 100% support on these forum pages. Not from me.
When it comes to travel patterns, Brightline West is not the same as Florida’s Brightline, where there are passenger stations all along the route. As you can’t build a passenger station in a 50-foot freeway median, this is pretty much a long-distance end-to-end service. That’s what airplanes are for. I assume that there are many flights to Las Vegas from LAX, Ontario, San Diego, and Burbank (and I think there’s an airport at Long Beach also). I am at a total loss as to how Brightline West would in any way be an improvement over the air service that now exists. I’m for passenger trains where tracks exist. Tracks for Brightline West do not exist.
After reading this article, how can anyone still believe that Brightline West is a free-market company.
It’s just another example of corporate welfare.
Readers know that every almost passenger railroad on the face of the earth is tax-subsidized, most of them very heavily so. Brightline West will cost substantially more per mile than most of them so the tax subsidy will be all the higher.
Brightline West couldn’t build or operate one inch of railroad without it being wards of the two state governments. The chances of Brightline West recovering its capital and operating cost are exactly the same as the chances of me walking to Jupiter without a space suit and getting there by dinnertime.
There is no economic difference between CalHSR and Brightline West. The only difference is that one is a tax-subsidized public agency and the other is a tax-subsidized private corporation. The economics of either are beyond hopeless.
Interesting when you state that as if you know the facts about the financing aspect as well as how Brightline intends to make most of it’s money. Just as in Florida it is all about the real estate, even though Brightline itself is making money down in Florida the real income will come from the future real estate developments around the stations.
As for the grade problem, I wonder how many people know that if they are going to use the Siemens IC3/4 as the basis for Brightline West those trains were designed to ascend grades of 3 to 4% at 220mph specifically, so I think the curvature more than the gradients will deter speed, and some of those descriptions of the routing don’t match what I’ve read elsewhere.