Our favorite welfare queen, Xpress West (née Desert Xpress) isn’t letting its plans be constrained by anything so mundane as reality. Original pitchman Sig “The Fixer” Rogich has crawled off into the underbrush somewhere but his Choo-Choo-to-Nowhere has found additional front men. And Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) continues to push for a record amount of federal subsidy. It will take $6.9 billion, minimum (some sources say $8 billion), just to get the line from Las Vegas to that mother lode of tourism, Victorville. Xpress West hucksters now say they can get you all the way to Los Angeles — with the help of a big-ass loan (at least $1.5 billion) and an circuitous detour through Palmdale … by 2029, that is. Having drunk deeply of their own bathwater, they’re now talking about a San Francisco leg … not to mention ones to Phoenix, Salt Lake City and Denver. Xpress West COO Andrew Mack talks vaguely about the line being “an extension of Las Vegas,” implying — but carefully not promising — the presence of en route gambling, which would be illegal beyond description.
Still not laughing? How about pledges of $45/ticket, 90-minute, L.A.-to-Vegas runs (subject to 17 years’ worth of inflation, mind you)? Or $140/240-minute Frisco-to-Sin City trips? Or a budget that’s chump change compared the $68 billion cost of this Golden State-only route? And if you think you’re going to be able to “skip such hassles as airport security, bag checks and flight delays,” boy, is the joke on you!
Nor does the brain trust behind this boondoggle, er, bold experiment in transportation inspire confidence. Lead investor Anthony Marnell II builds casinos, not transit lines, and construction in the casino biz 
is notorious for cost overruns. Another $50 million comes from secretive North Dakota motel baron Gary Tharaldson (left). That seed money is just a fraction of the $18 million/acre he suckered out of Harrah’s Entertainment CEO Gary Loveman for the old Westward Ho and its sister property, The Ho. Tharaldson’s biggest legacy to Vegas is the failed ManhattanWest condo project over on the west side of the valley. Yup, just the guy I’d trust with billions in taxpayer dollars.
For now, the project lives or dies on federal funding. “Backup planning isn’t necessarily at the top of minds right now,” yawned an Xpress West exec. And why not? If the venture fails, it “likely” becomes a ward of the government. So one way or another, there’s a not-inconsiderable risk that John Q. Taxpayer is going to be taken for a ride, even if he never sets foot aboard Xpress West.
People like these budding railroad magnates looking to bury their noses in the federal trough should be required to, oh, I dunno, disclose their tax returns. How about it, Harry?
Every taxpayer doesn’t drive down every stretch of highway the government lays down, but that’s okay.
If you want a preview of where this leads to, look to the LV Monorail. It’s the same premise: some businessmen will build a privately operated transit system to appeal to Nevadan’s tilt for small government, but are unable to break ground without government subsidy.
In the case of the Monorail, they built a train so difficult to access that nobody wants to use it. They ask for state funds normally reserved for non-profits, and then feign outrage as a business with a right to privacy with the public wonders how the money was spent.
The same people who tried and failed to replace the RTC’s strip routes are trying to do it again with a leg of what should be a national transportation grid.
It’s truly sad that every discussion about every infrastructure project devolves into a bumper-sticker cliche contest. Either we invest in America or we wither. High speed rail in the Mohave could certainly turn into a water park outside Barstow with a Hula theme, but it might also thrive. Personally, I would never drive to Vegas on a Friday night, driving home on Sunday afternoon/evening has cured me of that malady. Sitting in traffic after a Vegas weekend frays nerves, and tests resolve. The naysayers cried like babies when Los Angeles dug deep to build the subways, and they were simply wrong, the subway is awesome. Perhaps David can find groups of choir-boy investors with perfect track records on everything, but this particular project involves getting people into gambling dens, hardly a Monk-like endevour. America seems willing to park our military in Afghanistan for decades, but whenever a project that improves our actual homeland is proposed, all of a sudden it’s an out-of-control evil Socialist plot…
I found a newspaper article in the Las Vegas Review Journal from June 21, 2006 entitled “Westward Ho site could join mixed-use craze”. It says that Tharaldson Cos. bought 15 acres of land where the Westward Ho was for $170 million dollars. Originally Tharaldson Cos. planned to build a $1.8 billion mixed-use resort which included 1,000 condominium hotel units, 600 residential condominiums, a 600-room hotel , an 80,000-square-foot casino and 200,000 square feet of retail.
Instead Tharaldson Cos. sold the same 15 acres to Harrahs for $18 million dollars an acre. 15 acres X $18 million dollars = $270 million dollars. So Tharaldson Cos. made $100 million dollars on land flipping and spent part of its profit on Manhattan West, one of the many failed condominium projects in Las Vegas.
Miss Cleo would be proud of Gary Tharaldson for this land flipping endeavor he made with Harrahs.
Totally, Paul! It was the Las Vegas flip of the decade. That condo/casino/Ferris wheel plan of Tharaldson’s was pure sham, I am certain in my bones — a canny stratagem for driving the asking price upward. The owners of the next-door parcel got “only” $9 million per acre from Harrah’s. They could have taken a few pointers from Tharaldson. Gary Loveman was spending insane amounts of money gobbling up real estate and, at $9 million/acre, got off cheaply indeed.