An agreement has been signed between a private U.S. venture and a China Railway Group-led consortium that will see the two come together to construct a high speed train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The train will be quite fast, reaching speeds of 150mph, cutting down the travel time significantly. It roughly takes about four hours to cover the 230 miles from LA to Vegas in a car, the train is going to cut it down to 80 minutes.
Construction on XpressWest, that’s what the train will be called, is due to begin in September 2016. There will be an initial capital injection of $100 million to get this project off the ground, private sector funds are likely to cover majority of the $7 billion bill for this project though loan applications are pending before the Federal Railroad Administration.
XpressWest’s website says that the route will be Las Vegas to Victorville, California which is about 85 miles northeast of Los Angeles, however the LA Times reports that according to Chinese officials involved in this project the planned route is Vegas to LA.
This happens to be China’s first high-speed rail project in the United States and similar projects in the future will certainly depend upon the performance of this one. No timeframe has been provided right now in which we can expect construction on XpressWest to be finished and the line opened to the public.
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