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Just How Doomed Is the Train to California?

🚄 Ahh, the promise of 2024. The sun was shining and Brightline West had finally broken ground on the once-mythical high speed rail line finally connecting Las Vegas and Southern California. Permitting would be fast-tracked by following I-15, and if the chips fell right, the whole thing would open in time for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

Then came the clouds. Immediately upon starting construction, the company announced the total cost had ballooned by 40 percent, now soaring past $21 billion. The opening date slipped past the Olympics into 2029, and a $6 billion loan from the feds — promised under Biden — had stalled under Trump. And despite starting work on the Las Vegas station last year, no one’s been seen at the parking garage construction site in months. Now, Florida-based sister-company Brightline is filing for bankruptcy.

Anyone want to buy a train ticket? [KTNV, Las Vegas Review-Journal]

• To clarify: Brightline and Brightline West are two separate companies under the umbrella of the private equity firm Fortress, which applied the Brightline name to the California-Nevada project in hopes of a boost from the existing high speed rail line in Florida. [KTNV]
• By all accounts, regular Floridian passengers enjoy their zippy trains. Ridership and revenue have continued to increase through last year. But it hasn’t increased nearly fast enough to offset the burden of $5.5 billion in outstanding debt, largely from loans used to build the rail lines in the first place. [WKMG Orlando]
• And not for nothing, Florida’s Brightline has killed so many people crossing the tracks (well over 200 in 9 years) that there’s even a “Brightline killcount” website with a live ticker of how many “the train hath slain.” What else can be said but YIKES. [CBS News]
• Thus, bankruptcy. Kind of. Brightline is still operating its Florida train system as it technically didn’t file for bankruptcy — 17 of its parent companies did. But the bankruptcy deal has opened up nearly $500 million in yet more credit, so the debt collections will continue until morale improves. [Mass Transit Magazine]
• But does a rocky Florida experiment spell doom for Brightline West? They’ll still have to build the thing first, and that will require the aforementioned $6 billion federal loan. But delays have piled on delays, and the federal government’s timeline now threatens to stretch into 2027. [Bloomberg]
• If they build it, will they come? Well, Brightline West wants to charge $119 for a one-way fare, and $133 for premium cabin service. That’s nearly double the average cost of a tank of gas in Nevada for a small car ($65), and still more than a full tank for a real guzzler of an SUV ($98), even after Iran-related price surges. To say nothing of the fact that Brightline West will end not in Los Angeles proper, but … Rancho Cucamonga. (KLAS, AAA)