Brightline High-Speed Rail Could Connect Vegas to San Fran

California announced a plan on Monday to connect the Brightline High-Speed Rail line, currently under construction from Las Vegas to LA, to San Francisco via a new high-speed rail it proposes in the Mojave Desert. But that’s only if a long-delayed bullet train from the City of Angels to the City by the Bay ever gets built. And that’s a big if.

On Monday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) hammered a symbolic spike into the ground in Kern County, signaling the start of construction on the first segment of the California High-Speed Rail project (CAHSR). This publicly funded system, being developed by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, would reduce the six-to-seven hour ground transportation time from LA to San Francisco to three.

Also on Monday, California officials said its train, which will terminate at LA’s Union Station, will make a stop in Palmdale. That’s so it can connect to another planned high-speed rail line. Called the High Desert Corridor, this one will zoom CAHSR riders 54 miles east to a stop on the privately funded Brightline West.

This connection is not only good news for Vegas visitors headed home to San Francisco, but also to downtown LA. Exiting the Brightline at its High Desert Corridor station, then bulleting west to the CAHSR train could cut up to an hour off the travel time to Union Station since commuting there via light rail from Rancho Cucamonga is likely to be slow-going.

Train in Vain?

Don’t get too excited, though. Though Gov. Newsom says to expect an up-and-running CAHSR by 2033, experience says otherwise.

“California’s high-speed rail project has failed because of political incompetence, and there is no plausible scenario where the cost to federal or state taxpayers can be justified,” Kiley said in a news release promoting the bill.

Currently, the CAHSR is expected to cost $128 billion (including the cost of the High Desert Corridor). That’s almost quadruple the $33 billion price tag promised when it was originally proposed in 2008.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the new plan to link three rail lines “would allow Newsom to leverage the infrastructure California has built with investments that have already been made in other projects.”