Talk of a high-speed train from Las Vegas to Southern California has been nothing but hot air for nearly a decade. Now, however, it looks like Lady Luck may cast her fickle favor on commuters.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is backing a $45 million project that would build a maglev (magnetic levitation) train to connect the bright lights of Las Vegas to sunny SoCal (Anaheim, specifically). Funding for such transportation projects was approved in 2005, but has yet to be allocated. Meanwhile, traffic in southern Nevada—and, notoriously, in Southern California—has only worsened.
Naysayers, like Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, dismissed the train as a mere starry-eyed, speculative venture. President Bush, whose track record shows he hasn’t historically supported public transit or pedestrian-oriented projects, stationed himself in DeMint’s camp.
Reid was displeased by DeMint’s support of a privately-owned, regular train service that would run from Las Vegas to Antelope Valley, a desert 85 miles northeast of downtown Los Angeles. The high speed train would travel at approx. 300 mph, and would take passengers from L.A. to Las Vegas in less than an hour.
Source: Las Vegas Sun.
Photos via flickr by StevenM_61 and Bashed.
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