Biden administration promises $6 billion to help floundering high-speed rail projects
Eden Villalovas
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The Biden administration announced $6 billion in funding this week to two green high-speed railway projects in the West, giving a boost to plans that have been years in the making.
The grants from the Department of Transportation will allocate $3 billion to a privately owned route between Las Vegas and Southern California and $3.1 billion to California’s longtime publicly funded effort to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco.
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Brightline, the nation’s first private passenger rail service, is expected to have speeds of at least 186 miles per hour and proposed a travel time of two hours between the locations. The Las Vegas to Southern California high-speed rail is set to be open by 2028.
Earlier this year, Nevada and California lawmakers expressed their support for the project in a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Brightline executives and the Nevada Department of Transportation applied for a $3.75 billion grant from the Biden administration.
Florida’s Brightline began running trains between Miami and Orlando, reaching speeds of 125 mph, in September. The highly anticipated service operates in Boca Raton, Aventura, West Palm Beach, and Fort Lauderdale.
However, the company received criticism when the first-ever Brightline train connecting Miami to Orlando was delayed due to a deadly crash along the route. Brightline has had nearly 100 deaths since starting operations six years ago. Brightline trains have had the highest death rate in the nation since the launch of the Miami station, according to the Associated Press.
Brightline has several cities it hopes to connect across the nation, founded on the belief that certain cities are too short to fly and too far to drive to, offering an eco-friendly alternative.
President Joe Biden is in Las Vegas and is expected to announce the project on Friday.
Another $3.1 billion will be given to fund publicly operated plans to connect Los Angeles with the Central Valley and then San Francisco, in a trip time of 2 hours and 40 minutes.
In 2008, California voters supported plans to fund a high-speed rail, approving $9.95 billion of state bond funds to build 800 miles of rail connecting Los Angeles and San Francisco. The initial project planned speeds of up to 220 miles per hour, with an expected completion date of 2020.
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Not a single mile of track has been laid over a decade later, while the price tag for the project continues to skyrocket.
“California takes great pride in our ambitious status as the leading edge of high-speed rail in America,” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Tuesday on X, previously Twitter. “With $3 billion in new federal funding, we take an important leap closer to making high-speed rail a reality in California.”