Not really. We've been hearing about this for years and it's no closer to happening now than it was a decade ago.
This idea's been kicking around so long that its originator appears to be former Las Vegas Mayor William Briare, during a tenure that stretched from 1975 to 1987. Ironically, Las Vegas still had train service to Los Angeles while Briare was mayor. The Amtrak Desert Wind wasn't discontinued until 1997.
The following is a brief (believe it or not) rundown on a few of the proposals.
A high-speed maglev train was introduced in 1981 and resurrected periodically. It was planned to run at 300 miles per hour, for a total transit time of 86 minutes. The route would’ve begun in Anaheim, with California stops in Ontario and Victorville.
However, the costs were prohibitive: $12 billion to build the line. The environmental-impact study alone was estimated at $7 million. Then the Federal Railroad Administration snubbed Las Vegas for high-speed-rail funds in a 2001 competition. (No one else was chosen, either.) Money that had been appropriated -- $45 million – for planning was ultimately rerouted into Las Vegas highway construction.
The death knell for the maglev was sounded in mid-June 2010, when Sen. Harry Reid (D), in a tight reelection race, switched his support to a project supported by Republican political fixer Sig Rogich.
(American Maglev Group tried to revive the project in 2014, citing the fact that – unlike high-speed rail, a maglev train could surmount California's vexing El Cajon Pass. Also complicating the process for rival projects is that Union Pacific freight trains have priority on the line that runs to Vegas, potentially making a rail journey longer than a car drive.)
Reid's fancy Desert Xpress – later redubbed XpressWest – was something of a white elephant. To use it, passengers would have to drive to Victorville or Palmdale, park, and ride the Xpress the rest of the way, in 84 minutes.
At the time, the project would have cost $21 million per mile. Fares were estimated at $50 from Vegas to Victorville. But even if the cost of gas had risen to $5 a gallon, it would still cost less to drive those 166 miles.
Reid's attempt to gin up funds for Desert Xpress was further hampered by then-Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, who never got around to asking for federal-stimulus funds for the route. The project languished a while, but caught a second wind late last year when it was designated the franchise of choice by the Nevada High-Speed Rail Authority. Even then, you'd have to change trains in Victorville and then take the Metrolink from Palmdale to get to Los Angeles. Back in 2012, the estimated completion date of Xpress West was 2029.
Then there was the X Train. Onboard gambling was envisioned for it after crossing the state line into Nevada. Another problem was that the developers were relying on Tamares Group to build a train station at the Plaza Hotel in downtown Las Vegas, but considering that Tamares invested only $20 million into refurbishing the decrepit Plaza, expecting it to pony up for a state-of-the-art train station was carrying optimism to an … Xtreme. Selling points for the train, which was to have been rolled out in May 2015, were that it would have a Rick Moonen seafood restaurant on board (and the train would do the double duty of hauling supplies for Moonen's Las Vegas restaurants) and that it would have priority over the Union Pacific freight trains.
That plan came undone in November 2013. An SEC filing revealed that the X Train had forfeited its $600,000 deposit to Union Pacific and was now pleading with Amtrak to reinstate service to Sin City, with the idea of coupling a few "party cars" onto an Amtrak train. (It had also planned to pay Union Pacific $67 million to upgrade its tracks, using the money from a massive penny-stock float.) Before the roof caved in, X Train had been pitching five-hour Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas rides for $99 a head.
Now, instead of disembarking passengers in downtown Las Vegas, X Train bosses planned to build a station in North Las Vegas, in the distant and dark precincts of the I-15/Craig Road intersection. It would have been a boon for taxi drivers; for passengers, not so much.
Our favorite meme has to come from fact-challenged Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, who accused Harry Reid of trying to green-light a "Red Light Express" that would run from Disneyland to the Moonlite Bunny Ranch brothel, outside Carson City. Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly piled on, saying, "The bunnies are very happy about this development."
Reid was pitching a tourist-train from Carson City to Virginia City, passing through brothel-friendly Lyon County (the train currently runs from Virginia City to Gold Hill, both in Storey County). However, the Disneyland-to-Perdition route will remain a conceit that is far more entertaining than true.
