Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Obama & Reid's Bullet Train to Nowhere..!....Victorville to Vegas..

We can't do the Keystone Pipeline,..but lets do a bullet train to the Casinos....with your money...



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VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) -- On a dusty, rock-strewn expanse at the edge of the Mojave Desert, a company linked to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wants to build a bullet train that would rocket tourists from the middle of nowhere to the gambling palaces of Las Vegas.

Privately held DesertXpress is on the verge of landing a $4.9 billion loan from the Obama administration to build the 150 mph train, which could be a lifeline for a region devastated by the housing crash or a crap shoot for taxpayers weary of Washington spending.

The vast park-and-ride project hinges on the untested idea that car-loving Californians will drive about 100 miles from the Los Angeles area, pull off busy Interstate 15 and board a train for the final leg to the famous Strip.

Planners imagine that millions of travelers a year will one day flock to a station outside down-on-its-luck Victorville, a small city where shuttered storefronts pock the historic downtown.

An alliance of business and political rainmakers from The Strip to Capitol Hill is backing the project that could become the first high-speed system to break ground under President Barack Obama's push to modernize the U.S. rail network - and give the Democratic president's re-election prospects a lift in battleground Nevada.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has publicly blessed the train - it means jobs, he says - and it's cleared several regulatory hurdles in Washington.

Yet even as the Federal Railroad Administration considers awarding what would be, by far, the largest loan of its type, its own research warns it's difficult to predict how many people will ride the train, a critical measure of financial survival, an Associated Press review found.

There are other skeptics, as well.

"It's insanity," says Thomas Finkbiner of the Intermodal Transportation Institute at the University of Denver. "People won't drive to a train to go someplace. If you are going to drive, why not drive all the way and leave when you want?"

Construction cost projections have soared to as much as $6.5 billion, not including interest on the loan. Some fear taxpayer subsidies are inevitable.

Reid and other supporters point to research that shows 80,000 new jobs, but FRA documents show virtually all those would be temporary - no more than 722 would be permanent.

Victorville Mayor Ryan McEachron envisions a bustling transportation oasis with a hotel, restaurants, maybe even homes, on the proposed station site. He believes drivers can be enticed out of their cars, even in a region where the notion of rail travel can seem as distant as a New York subway.

The company is "going to have to market and market hard in order to get the ridership they need to support paying back the loan," the mayor says. "I think you can change the thinking."

Along with Reid, the president's most influential Democratic ally in Congress, the plan is being advanced by casino developer and contractor Anthony Marnell II, whose credits include building the Bellagio and Wynn Las Vegas and who heads Marnell Companies, the majority shareholder in DesertXpress; project consultant Sig Rogich, a Republican adviser to two presidential campaigns who founded Nevada's most influential lobbying and advertising company; and Canadian transportation giant Bombardier, a DesertXpress strategic adviser that wants to supply its rail cars.

A decision on the loan is not expected until mid-year, but the company has spent some $30 million sharpening its plan and refining ridership projections. Rising gas prices and increasing traffic congestion could help ticket sales, and the company is touting reduced air pollution from fewer cars on the road.

"It's Victorville that makes the project work," says chief executive Andrew Mack.

Far from being a train from nowhere, company planners see the struggling city of 115,000, once a stop on storied Route 66, as a collection point for millions of drivers heading north to Las Vegas. Bringing the line deeper into the populous Los Angeles area would raise formidable challenges, Mack said, from crossing numerous freeways to finding space for track.

The lot now stippled with spindly creosote bushes has room for 15,000 parking spaces. Bags would be checked through to hotel rooms. At peak hours, trains would depart every 20 minutes. Mack says an average round-trip fare could be as low as $75, though documents estimate $100.

Mack says the train will deliver convenience - and for a price, luxury - that studies show passengers want.

DesertXpress officials once boasted they would build the line with private dollars, but they now plan to rely on FRA financing to cover the bulk of the cost. Mack didn't directly answer if the company turned to the FRA because private investors were unwilling to take the risk, but said the loan terms are attractive.

"When somebody comes and tells me I will build a system that pays for itself, I'm suspicious," said Hasan Ikhrata, executive director of the Southern California Association of Governments, which questioned ridership potential in a report last year. "There is no high-speed rail system in the world that operates without subsidies."

The company is still arranging as much as $1.6 billion needed to cover its share of the construction bill for the roughly 200-mile line. Investments could hinge on the loan approval, which requires the company to convince the FRA that taxpayers won't get stiffed. In a worst-case scenario, the train would become government property if the company fails.

The low-interest loan would be about three times the combined amount the FRA loaned 32 other projects through the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing program since its inception in 2002.

If successful, the train could be a forerunner in a national high-speed rail network, while bringing a rich return for investors and delivering visitors to Vegas. It would also give Nevada residents an option to Southern California, albeit many miles from tourist hotspots like Hollywood or the beaches.

The company is seeking funds at a time when a proposed high-speed train running from San Francisco to Southern California has been questioned because of ballooning costs and fear it will sap taxpayer dollars.

Early company research projected the train would lure away nearly one in four car, bus and airline travelers, initially about 4 million people annually. The company now pegs first-year ridership at about 3 million, but that projection was trimmed to 2.5 million by government analysts who urged more study.

The risks are summarized in a 2007 study commissioned by ACS Infrastructure North America, a division of a global construction company that DesertXpress says is seeking a role in the project, that found most travelers were "broadly happy" going to Las Vegas by car or airline. While most travelers would be open to riding a train, the report warned the company would need to lure riders with pampering.

On clear roads, the 270-mile drive from downtown Los Angeles to Las Vegas takes about four hours. Planners say the train ride from Victorville to Las Vegas would take about 80 minutes, but it's debatable how much time would be saved after parking, boarding the train and reaching a Las Vegas hotel.

Round-trip flights from Los Angeles to Las Vegas can be booked for under $100.

The dream of uniting Southern California and Las Vegas by high-speed rail has been discussed for decades. In the mid-1980s, Las Vegas officials predicted a line would be running by 2000. DesertXpress, which would roughly parallel Interstate-15 on a pair of new tracks, has predicted for several years that it would soon break ground.

Reid initially backed a rival project that planned to use magnetic power to reach Orange County, but he jumped trains shortly after Rogich became co-chair of Republicans for Reid, a Nevada group with ties to the gambling industry that helped Reid win re-election in 2010.

The senator's office disputes any connection between his flip and Rogich's involvement in the campaign. Spokeswoman Kristen Orthman says Reid's decision was based on the viability of DesertXpress, while the magnetically powered project languished.

Marnell, another member of Republicans for Reid, is president of one of several companies under the DesertXpress corporate banner. He and his son, M Resort, Spa and Casino President Anthony Marnell III, are also investors.

Federal records show the elder Marnell has donated at least $15,000 to political committees connected to Reid since 2010, including a $5,000 donation in May to the senator's Searchlight Leadership Fund.

According to federal records, the company has spent at least $270,000 since 2006 lobbying at the House, Senate and federal offices.

Other investors include North Dakota businessman Gary Tharaldson, who donated $10,000 to a Reid committee in March, and transportation expert Tom Stone, who organized DesertXpress with partner Mack in 2005.

Nevada records show DesertXpress HRS Corp., headed by the elder Marnell with his son as a director, was authorized to issue 25,000 shares of stock. DesertXpress declined to say who held those shares, if issued, and in what amounts.

Not everyone in the high desert is on board with the project.

Thirty miles northeast of Victorville on I-15, officials in Barstow fear they'll lose 2,300 jobs. The impact will be "unsustainable," Mayor Joe Gomez wrote to LaHood in October 2010, according to a letter released under a public records request.

To appease those concerns, McEachron said the station's proposed location was moved about halfway to Barstow. The patch of vacant land is so remote the city would have to annex it.

Humm I seem to remember a whole lot of bitching about a bridge to no where but say this makes so much sense how can we pass up a big Obama payday like this. A few hundred really needed jobs for a cool few million for Obama and his thugs?

Kaleefornia is ripping off the tax payers just like Democrat John Corzine.


Corrupt criminal groups (unions) doing again to the American tax payer.


Wonder what the Carbon footprint will be for that project?

probably kill kill a whole lot of baby polar bears.

Is Nobel Peace Prize recipient Al Gore aware of this project and it's negative impact on baby polar bears?

liberal politicians = idiots

That's pretty [bleep] lame. Another train got shot down back east that would have actually made sense. To Vegas? Who gives a damn?

We're talking trains, what are you talking about polar bears for?

I'm all for modernizing our national transit system and catching up with the rest of the world. I don't think this is the place to start though. Making a bullet train to Vegas just so retirees can blow their pensions isn't going to make a dent in the recessed economy.

For that to even try to work it would have to go at least san bernardino and hook up with the metrolink out of la and orange county. Amtrack used to run from la to vegas a couple times a week but coulnt make it pay so they cut the train off. As far as a train every 20 mins that is nonsense, couple a day thurs to mon maybe. Dont see them getting another main up cajon pass, especialy a high speed main. If they were to follow the up right of way to vegas they would have to build their track right through the middle of the mojave national preserve, good luck getting the enviro wackos to let that slide in ca.

Why build another passenger train? we're already subsidising(sp) those trains that carry the residents of Connecticut and Rhode Island into Nu Yawk City every day.

There is a lot of regular traffic to & from LA & Vegas.

But they're asking people to drive an hour to get to Victorville, wait on the train. Then when they get to Vegas they'll need/want a car. The gas each way will probably cost less than the train fare. No wonder ridership is small on trains.

our GOP Governor turned down a couple of billion dollars in federal money to fund a bullet train from Tampa to Orlando.
He was pilloried in the liberal press, but his actions were correct.
Studies showed that the train would never be commercially viable, and after the federal money ran out, Florida would have been legally obligated for many more billions to fund and operate the white elephant.

It's not about the trains, it's about the subsidies.
Like Solyndra, Obama's buddies need subsidized to maintain their millionaire lifestyles. Left to fend for themselves wouuld be MOST unfair. Why, some of them might actually have to work for a living learning to become both competitive and productive. That is simply out of the question.