Amtrak Desert Wind Los Angeles LA - Las Vegas NV Past Present Future

[NRGeep]

To it's boosters, Brightline is a testament to what free enterprise can accomplish- But the reality is that hauling people (via passenger rail) has been a money loser since the 1960's and Brightline wouldn't exist without some form of government backing.

washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/november-december-2018/the-train-that-only-libertarians-can-love/

A 3.2 billion tax exempt Private Activity Bond from California is still coming from a state government funding source; however one spins it. Branson would not have entered this "free market" railroad in Florida and the proposed Victorville-Las Vegas route without generous PAB's.
And folks are still going to have to get the 90 miles from LA to Victorville over the mountains, which nullifies most of the high speed rail benefits, unless they revise their plan to depart from LA,which would require more government bonds.
I'm all for viable new passenger rail corridors, but Branson and other potential investors are not doing this with only their own capital...

[eolesen]

Point of order....

A 3.2 billion tax exempt Private Activity Bond from California is still coming from a state government funding source; however one spins it.

They're not using government funding. The only "subsidy" is making it tax exempt. States do that all the time to bring in new businesses and it doesn't cost the taxpayer anything out of pocket aside from perhaps denying new tax revenue.

[Arborwayfan]

Tax breaks are absolutely a government subsidy. The home mortgage deduction is a subsidy to housing, property tax abatements for new businesses are a subsidy to business, etc. By issuing tax-exempt bonds, the gov't of a state is forgoing some income tax revenue for itself AND for the federal government. And it's not new tax revenue. The people who buy tax exempt state and local bonds were going to invest in something; if they hadn't had the option of tax exempt bonds they'd have invested in ordinary security or stock and paid taxes on the income from it.

[Tadman]

By that logic absolutely every expenditure is government subsidized because this year the government didn't decide to tax us 100%, instead they hit us for just 33% of income, 10% of sales, and $.50/gallon of gas.... instead of 98% of income, 150% of sales, and $10/gal.

Further, Private Activity Bonds are materially and significantly different than the traditional government agency/authority/administration like Amtrak or the Post Office. At Amtrak, there is virtually no risk of private capital and that's a big part of the failing. Nobody is incentivized to do better because nobody has capital at risk. A company using PABs has significant private capital at risk and thus those private investors are strongly incentivized to do better, ad make sure their employees do better. There is no guaranteed $1.8b every year like Amtrak gets.

If someone at Amtrak screws up and they have a bad year, every year they get to try again. Nobody has ever come close to dropping that $1.8b/year in almost 50 years. It's not legally guaranteed, but I'm not ever betting against it. On the other hand, A company using PABs has absolutely nothing like that safety net. If Private Company XYZ gets public activity bonds and goes out of business in year 2, there is no next year. They're toast. The only possible outcomes will see the shareholders lose control and possibly lose the entire value of their shares.

[mtuandrew]

Perhaps it would be worth starting a topic on public-private partnerships in American rail. PABs would fit that discussion!

[John_Perkowski]

You want to know why Amtrak does not have LA-Las Vegas service?

It. Cannot. Compete.


Just ONE airline, Southwest, has 28 departures from LA airports to Las Vegas daily.
- 10 LAX
- 10 Burbank
- 5 Orange County
- 3 Ontario

Using a 737-700 as the “typical” plane, each flight has 143 salable seats.

28 x 143 = 4,004 seats. EACH seat equals 2 free 50lb checked bags.

Now, assume an Amfleet or Horizon car with 60 salable seats. Assume 6 coaches per train, plus a lounge, plus a baggage car. That’s 240 salable seats per consist.

One or two daily turns will not be acceptable to the LA megalopolis public. You’ll need trains starting at
Burbank Junction or Chatsworth
Irvine and Fullerton
Lax, by way of Metrolink
Use 2 cars per
Have them link up at San Bernardino.

You’ll need 5 turns a day, or the traveling LA public will look at you and say “not convenient”

And that is why this is an opium induced pipe dream.

I say all this as a native Angeleno, with positions in LUV, UNP, and BH.

[mtuandrew]

Fair points, Colonel, but you can’t compete at all if you don’t even try. Worth considering a train that starts at LAUS, hits points east of there on its way through Palmdale, then reverses direction at Mojave before connecting with a LAUS-San Bernardino-Barstow bus. (A train over Cajon would be much preferable and save easily an hour, as you can imagine.)

For some travelers, not just foamers, the train checks off all the right boxes and the elapsed time isn’t as big a problem.

[John_Perkowski]

Andrew,

Eliminating TSA and minimizing baggage handling from the car to the platform will equalize the time differential.

People measure travel in time from their door to their destination door.

[STrRedWolf]

So for this morning, I traced the most likely route using existing track, LAUS to the old station in Las Vegas (where there's now City Hall parking, but the platforms are there).

It is roughly 400 km to fly from LAX to Vegas, accounting for LAX's "over the water" exit traffic pattern. It's roughly 520 km to take a train from LAUS to Amtrak Vegas. I had to route through Metrolink territory.

At 79 MPH going non-stop (127 kmph), that's a little over four hours -- minimum! And that's making a lot of assumptions. I would guess more six hours given Metrolink and all the curves through the mountains. I think maybe three to four round trips, maximum, using four consists with a dinette car.

To go even faster, I would say:

• Route to get out of LA ASAP!
• Lay down more track for 125 MPH access
• TUNNEL THROUGH THEM MOUNTAINS!
• ELECTRIFY!

The route would be:

• LA Union Station
• Burbank
• Burbank Airport
• Pasadena
• Mojave (train reverses here -- new track between Mojave and Barstow)
• Barstow (new track between here and Los Vegas)
• Los Vegas Strip
• Los Vegas Center

Assuming 520 km for the trip, but also 75% of it at 125 mph (201 kmph)... it works out to a rough 3 hours. That's more like NEC speeds, and that's bloody competitive!

[Arborwayfan]

Tadman, I disagree. There are set tax rates that apply to everyone across the board, and then there are exceptions to those rates. The exceptions are as much a form of spending as if the government mailed the lucky recipients a check. If the commercial property tax rate in my county is 3% of assessed value, and the county commission gives a new business an abatement down to 2%, we the county are subsidizing that new business by 1% of the assessed value of its property per year until the abatement ends. In the same way, by using state powers to allow a private company to issue tax-exempt bonds, we are spending the amount that we would have collected in taxes if the investors had instead invested in taxable bonds. Maybe that kind of exception has become so common that it is actually normal, but its still an exception that not all private businesses get.

Also, pretty much no one is actually paying 33% of income in federal income tax. We all get around $10 thousand tax free, and then we pay $10% on the next $9700, 12% on the next $29,500 (approx), 22% on the next $44,000 approx, 24% of the next $76,000 approx, 32% on the next $44,000 approx, 35% on the next $306,000 approx, and 37% on everything we make over $510,301. (I say we, but of course most of us don't earn nearly enough to pay in the 30s on any fraction of our income.) That's single people; double it all for married couples. How tax brackets work admittedly has nothing particular to do with railroads, but it's worth knowing. Happy to delete this second paragraph upon moderator's request.

[John_Perkowski]

So for this morning, I traced the most likely route using existing track, LAUS to the old station in Las Vegas (where there's now City Hall parking, but the platforms are there).

It is roughly 400 km to fly from LAX to Vegas, accounting for LAX's "over the water" exit traffic pattern. It's roughly 520 km to take a train from LAUS to Amtrak Vegas. I had to route through Metrolink territory.

At 79 MPH going non-stop (127 kmph), that's a little over four hours -- minimum! And that's making a lot of assumptions. I would guess more six hours given Metrolink and all the curves through the mountains. I think maybe three to four round trips, maximum, using four consists with a dinette car.

To go even faster, I would say:

• Route to get out of LA ASAP!
• Lay down more track for 125 MPH access
• TUNNEL THROUGH THEM MOUNTAINS!
• ELECTRIFY!

The route would be:

• LA Union Station
• Burbank
• Burbank Airport
• Pasadena
• Mojave (train reverses here -- new track between Mojave and Barstow)
• Barstow (new track between here and Los Vegas)
• Los Vegas Strip
• Los Vegas Center

Assuming 520 km for the trip, but also 75% of it at 125 mph (201 kmph)... it works out to a rough 3 hours. That's more like NEC speeds, and that's bloody competitive!

(Gets out the fire hose of reality)

WITH WHAT MONEY?

[electricron]

So for this morning, I traced the most likely route using existing track, LAUS to the old station in Las Vegas (where there's now City Hall parking, but the platforms are there).

It is roughly 400 km to fly from LAX to Vegas, accounting for LAX's "over the water" exit traffic pattern. It's roughly 520 km to take a train from LAUS to Amtrak Vegas. I had to route through Metrolink territory.

At 79 MPH going non-stop (127 kmph), that's a little over four hours -- minimum! And that's making a lot of assumptions. I would guess more six hours given Metrolink and all the curves through the mountains. I think maybe three to four round trips, maximum, using four consists with a dinette car.

To go even faster, I would say:

• Route to get out of LA ASAP!
• Lay down more track for 125 MPH access
• TUNNEL THROUGH THEM MOUNTAINS!
• ELECTRIFY!

The route would be:

• LA Union Station
• Burbank
• Burbank Airport
• Pasadena
• Mojave (train reverses here -- new track between Mojave and Barstow)
• Barstow (new track between here and Los Vegas)
• Los Vegas Strip
• Los Vegas Center

Assuming 520 km for the trip, but also 75% of it at 125 mph (201 kmph)... it works out to a rough 3 hours. That's more like NEC speeds, and that's bloody competitive!

It's usually a good argument when people include time, distance, and speeds. Even Acela trains on the NEC can not achieve 125 mph average speeds even though they can travel as fast as 150 mph.
https://www.amtrak.com/content/dam/proj ... 010220.pdf
A tale of two different Acela trains between New York City and Washington D.C. Train 2103 normal and Train 2401 non-stop. the normal Acela takes 2 hours and 55 minutes to travel 226 rail miles, the non-stop Acela takes 2 hours and 33 minutes per the published Amtrak schedule linked above.
226 miles / 175 minutes x 60minutes / hour = 77.5 miles/hour average.
226 miles / 153 minutes x 60 minutes / hour = 88.6 miles/hour average.
I chose the southern half of the NEC to avoid the 79 mph speed limited New York City to New Haven tracks, even though Acela train speeds reach a maximum of just 135 mph. Never-the-less, Acela does not even come close to achieving an average speed of 100 mph. I'm sure the reason for the slower average speeds can be attributed to traffic congestion on the tracks with all the NJT, Septa, Marc, and other Amtrak trains also running on them.

Hopefully, the LA to LV trains will not have as much traffic congestion on the tracks running so much in a wide open desert once the trains leave the LA basin. Virgin (XpressWest) plans of grade separated and dedicated tracks guarantees no traffic congestion from other trains and vehicles.

To often discussions about LA to LV ignore elevation changes. There's a reason why Metrolink takes around 2 hours to travel around 62 miles between LA and Palmdale, averaging around 30 mph. The elevation of LA averages 285 feet, the elevation of Palmdale is 2657 feet. The elevation of Las Vegas is 2030 feet. Let's calculate some average slopes, just for fun, because to calculate the real slopes will require far more data points that just these three.
2657 - 285 = 2372 feet; 62 x 5280 = 485,760 feet; 2372 / 485760 x 100 = 0.488%
2657 - 2030 = 627 feet; 237 x 5280 = 1,251,360 feet; 627/1,251,360 x 100 = 0.05%
But this little bit of fun shows the grade climbing up to the high desert from Los Angeles to Palmdale is at least 10 times larger than the grades between Palmdale and Las Vegas.
Ever watched cross country trucking videos on YouTube climbing and coasting on mountain grades? They do not zip up or down at full speed, they slow down climbing up and braking down the hills just to maintain control. Trains do the same.

[mtuandrew]

It would take a brave civil engineer to design and oversee construction of a tunnel through the middle of the San Andreas Fault, especially when Cajon Pass is right there and still has enough room for a two-track HSR line. A Cajon Pass passenger line would pretty rapidly become a busy railroad too - you’d have a dozen daily round trips from Virgin Trains, another dozen-plus round trips from Metrolink, the daily Southwest Chief, and not unlikely a new Desert Wind. Worthwhile even at 79 mph, a very good investment if aligned for 125/150 mph immediately.

[Pensyfan19]

So for this morning, I traced the most likely route using existing track, LAUS to the old station in Las Vegas (where there's now City Hall parking, but the platforms are there).

It is roughly 400 km to fly from LAX to Vegas, accounting for LAX's "over the water" exit traffic pattern. It's roughly 520 km to take a train from LAUS to Amtrak Vegas. I had to route through Metrolink territory.

At 79 MPH going non-stop (127 kmph), that's a little over four hours -- minimum! And that's making a lot of assumptions. I would guess more six hours given Metrolink and all the curves through the mountains. I think maybe three to four round trips, maximum, using four consists with a dinette car.

To go even faster, I would say:

• Route to get out of LA ASAP!
• Lay down more track for 125 MPH access
• TUNNEL THROUGH THEM MOUNTAINS!
• ELECTRIFY!

The route would be:

• LA Union Station
• Burbank
• Burbank Airport
• Pasadena
• Mojave (train reverses here -- new track between Mojave and Barstow)
• Barstow (new track between here and Los Vegas)
• Los Vegas Strip
• Los Vegas Center

Assuming 520 km for the trip, but also 75% of it at 125 mph (201 kmph)... it works out to a rough 3 hours. That's more like NEC speeds, and that's bloody competitive!

(Gets out the fire hose of reality)

WITH WHAT MONEY?

Guess who's back. Back again.
What you are saying is true if this line were to be ran by amtrak but if it were to be ran by a private company, which it is, then it would get money from the private sector. This is a point I also wanted to mention in another discussion. If Amtrak, a government owned railroad who gets little funding from the government, were to run this corridor, and this can apply to any other existing or proposed passenger line in the U.S., they could only afford to have decent equipment with decent amshacks with two maybe three trains a day round trip. Now, of you were to have a private corporation, in this case virgin trains usa, run this line, then it could have more than enough funding from the private sector to afford luxurious stations, sleek and comfortable rolling stock, and 10 to 15 trains a day round trip, thus making these possibilities more attractive to cisomers than the few decent but not always convenient optoons which amtrak would provide.

[STrRedWolf]

WITH WHAT MONEY?

WE KNOW THAT ALREADY STOP PREACHING TO THE CHOIR! Geesh, what is with people mixing "impossible" with "improbable". Yes, it's Bloody Expensive(tm) with a big "B" because the costs start at billions. We know that. Possible to do with enough funding, yes.

Hopefully, the LA to LV trains will not have as much traffic congestion on the tracks running so much in a wide open desert once the trains leave the LA basin. Virgin (XpressWest) plans of grade separated and dedicated tracks guarantees no traffic congestion from other trains and vehicles.

Too often discussions about LA to LV ignore elevation changes. There's a reason why Metrolink takes around 2 hours to travel around 62 miles between LA and Palmdale, averaging around 30 mph. The elevation of LA averages 285 feet, the elevation of Palmdale is 2657 feet. The elevation of Las Vegas is 2030 feet. Let's calculate some average slopes, just for fun, because to calculate the real slopes will require far more data points that just these three.
2657 - 285 = 2372 feet; 62 x 5280 = 485,760 feet; 2372 / 485760 x 100 = 0.488%
2657 - 2030 = 627 feet; 237 x 5280 = 1,251,360 feet; 627/1,251,360 x 100 = 0.05%
But this little bit of fun shows the grade climbing up to the high desert from Los Angeles to Palmdale is at least 10 times larger than the grades between Palmdale and Las Vegas.
Ever watched cross country trucking videos on YouTube climbing and coasting on mountain grades? They do not zip up or down at full speed, they slow down climbing up and braking down the hills just to maintain control. Trains do the same.

Ouch. It makes me wonder if the Cajon Pass would be any faster, considering the elevation... or if there's a way out that can accommodate 79 MPH MAS going uphill. (Yes, I'm assuming double-head operation)

It would take a brave civil engineer to design and oversee construction of a tunnel through the middle of the San Andreas Fault, especially when Cajon Pass is right there and still has enough room for a two-track HSR line. A Cajon Pass passenger line would pretty rapidly become a busy railroad too - you’d have a dozen daily round trips from Virgin Trains, another dozen-plus round trips from Metrolink, the daily Southwest Chief, and not unlikely a new Desert Wind. Worthwhile even at 79 mph, a very good investment if aligned for 125/150 mph immediately.

From what I could tell, the fault line is in a valley, so track would cross over it. An enterprising engineer could create a bridge system that would accommodate for the shake and move.