By Jay JonesSpecial to The Los Angeles Times

June 20, 2010

 

Reporting from Las Vegas — 
Terry Mullery and his wife, Lisa, of Burbank, love an occasional weekend in Las Vegas. It's the boring and often-arduous drive on Interstate 15 they hate.

"We get up around 3 o'clock in the morning [on Friday] and are on the road by 4 … just to beat the traffic," he said. "And coming home [on Sunday], it's even worse unless you take an extra day off. No matter what, we get caught in horrific traffic.

"You think, 'This is insane. Why don't they put tracks down and have trains on it?' " he asks.

Passenger trains haven't passed through Las Vegas since 1997, when Amtrak halted its Desert Wind service between L.A. and Salt Lake City. There's been plenty of talk about reviving the line, but until recently, little movement.

Now people are crawling out from beneath wooden ties, pitching plans on how best to move people between Southern California and Sin City. It's one of the many intercity corridors where battles are being fought to secure federal or private funding, or both.

When it comes to the California- Nevada line, even the experts have lost count of how many proposals there are.

"There are quite a few," said Pushkin Kachroo, director of the Transportation Research Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. "There are different companies that are proposing different solutions."

Kachroo says the concepts include conventional diesel-powered trains, one using solar energy and two that use magnetic levitation — or maglev — technology. All have their supporters, but two projects are outdistancing their competitors, both in speed and support.

Las Vegas-based DesertXpress proposes using locomotive-less trains that, it says, could achieve a top speed of 150 mph. The 10 self-powered electric cars would employ the "steel wheels on steel rails" system that's been used since the 1800s.

L.A.-based American Magline Group wants to revolutionize U.S. rail travel. Using modern but expensive technology, the trains would hover above the railbed at speeds approaching 300 mph. Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, a Republican, is among the plan's supporters.

For years, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) was also a maglev fan. Recently, though, he switched tracks — to the DesertXpress line — noting that maglev proponents have failed to raise the necessary funding. In March, Reid declared that the project had "a 30-year record of failure." In May, he said ground for the new DesertXpress railway would be broken "later this year."

But the plan has its detractors, including many from the maglev camp. They think DesertXpress is doomed because its California terminus is 80 miles east of Los Angeles in Victorville.

"The competing DesertXpress train stops just past the halfway point in Victorville," notes Richann Bender, executive director of the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, a private group lobbying for maglev. "[DesertXpress] doesn't reach the largest population centers." (To a lesser degree, the same argument could be made for maglev's plan, because it would stop in Anaheim.)

Although the slower but less costly DesertXpress appears to be on the fast track, having the end-of-the-line in Victorville concerns some would-be passengers, including the couple from Burbank.

"If we were to leave on a Friday night [and drive] to Victorville, the traffic is horrible," Terry Mullery notes.

Emmet Fremaux, Amtrak's vice president for marketing, calls such rail lines "steel interstates." Although the national passenger railroad considers various new routes around the country, it's staying out of the Southern California-to-southern Nevada project.

Fremaux says Americans shouldn't expect a European-style network of high-speed trains — at least not for 20 years or so.

"Double-digit billions of dollars of investment [would be needed] to build that kind of solution," he observes. "Certainly, that can be out there, but we do need to realize that we can't jump there, I don't think, in one hop.

"If you're going to create a new, dedicated, [currently] nonexistent track, you've got to acquire a right-of-way. You need more land, you've got to do environmental impact statements," Fremaux says, adding that just the base costs could reach $25 million per mile.

Spending that sort of money — much of it tax dollars, of course — to encourage Americans to forsake their beloved automobiles is going to take one heck of a sales pitch, one on which Amtrak's already embarked with a simple slogan: "The Road to the Future Has Rails."

The railroad hired Seattle artist J. Craig Thorpe to create a poster conveying that theme. For Thorpe, who's been a rail fan since his rides aboard commuter trains as a kid, it was a labor of love.

"When I rode those commuter trains with my granddad, I felt a certain smugness as we blew by all the stalled traffic," he recalls. "And I thought, 'Something about this is important.'"

UNLV's Kachroo agrees with Thorpe and Amtrak: The motoring public needs to be sold on the benefits of passenger trains.

"Driving is stressful, and it takes so long," Kachroo says. "[The train] has to be a viable, attractive option, so that when people start using it, immediately they see the value."

The debate puts a new spin on an old puzzler from algebra class — the one about when the faster Train B will catch up with Train A, which is slower but has a 30-minute head start. Thinking caps on, please.

If Train A going 300 mph leaves Anaheim at the same time as Car B going 60 mph leaves Las Vegas, where will the two meet?

Answer: The train and the car will meet at the California-Nevada state line, a mere 10 minutes before the train pulls into the Sin City station, but three hours and 38 minutes before the car reaches Disneyland.

A math whiz would consider that an easy question to solve. But there's a much more difficult question: Once some sort of train service begins, will Southern Californians embrace it or keep their hands firmly on the steering wheel?

Not even a genius can answer that one.

travel@latimes.com



Posted on Monday June 21st by The Infrastructurist | 703

fundingThis is a guest post by Steve Loranger, Chairman, President and CEO of ITT Corp.

As awareness of the need for infrastructure investment broadens, the natural question is, “How do we pay for it?” This question of who should foot the bill has been a major barrier to progress in the U.S. and other Western nations, as I mentioned in a piece I wrote for the Huffington Postabout the importance of channeling infrastructure funding toward water and air traffic management systems. I believe the path forward is through partnerships among government, businesses, and consumers — a point Iaddressed at the Milken Institute Global Conference in April of this year.

For years, Western governments have been unable to provide the funds necessary to build and upgrade infrastructure at a sufficient level. During the Milken conference, Martin Koffel, Chairman and CEO of URS Corp, pointed out that over the past decade, China has invested 5% of its GDP in non-residential infrastructure, while the U.S. has invested less than 1.5%. This deficit may very well affect our ability to compete on a global stage.

During the past few years, some governments have begun to recognize the need for a renewed investment in infrastructure. Consider NextGen, the new GPS-based air traffic control system here in the U.S. This project is among the most ambitious and important aviation infrastructure investments in U.S. history, as evidenced by themassive investment the FAA is making to fund this wholesale revamping of the National Airspace System.

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But as national debts grow in Western nations, government financing of infrastructure is forecast to become even more challenging. I believe public-private partnerships play a key role. Here also, we can look to NextGen as an example. The program requires a long-term investment for which the FAA required a great deal of initial capital. To address this challenge, ITT is investing more than $200 million of its own capital to help make modernized air traffic a reality in this country. In exchange for that investment, the FAA has granted ITT the rights to manage the NextGen program’s ADS-B ground infrastructure during the next 10 years.

Consumers must also play a significant role. In regards to water, most Americans do not pay the full cost for their water consumption. In Germany, water tariffs are nearly three times the U.S. average and closer to the true cost-of-service. Until we are willing to raise tariffs — broadly — our funding structure will remain unsustainable. This inadequate investment for maintenance and growth is unfortunately not restricted to the U.S., and is a prime contributor to the growing global crisis of water scarcity.

Another issue raised at the conference was the process by which infrastructure projects are prioritized for funding. Failure to measure and demonstrate return on investment is one of the major speed limits in allocating government and private capital toward infrastructure investment. We here at ITT run our business such that every dollar of investment goes through a rigorous analysis that measures not only empirical returns and cash flows but also social benefits. Proposals for infrastructure projects should be measured by the same yardstick. Determining how to measure both the financial and social rates of return, from providing safe drinking water to having peace of mind when flying, is critical.

While these suggestions will certainly be challenging to implement, I am optimistic that through strategic partnerships, we can achieve a consensus on how to invest in these vital needs and unlock the right level of funding needed to enact change. This approach is critical. We need government and business and citizenry to work together so the critical networks in our skies — and under our feet — will meet the needs of generations to come.