Brightline Train That Was Never Happening is Now 79% More Never Happening
Brightline West, the company that genuinely seems to believe it is building a train between Las Vegas and Southern California, has revised the estimated cost of the project upward to $21.5 billion.
Even at its original budget of $12 billion, this project was never, ever happening. Now, it’s 79% not happening.
Headline from our highly trained Las Vegas local journalists, experts at examining facts and drawing conclusions using sources and critical thinking: “BRiGhtLiNe WEsT HIgH-SPeEd RaIL PRoJecT NOw oN TRAck FoR LAtE 2029.” We are not making this up. We added the SpongeBob case, but that was an actual headline. The mind reels.
This isn’t rocket science.
Brightline’s project—a 218-mile, all-electric high-speed rail line between Las Vegas, Nevada and Rancho Cucamonga, California—has about $6.5 billion in funding for this fever dream.
There’s a $3 billion federal grant from the Federal Railroad Administration, and another $3.5 billion in federal tax-exempt private activity bond allocations.
That’s it. The project was $6 billion short when the projected cost was $12 billion. Now, the cost is $21.5 billion, and if you think that’s going to be the actual budget, you should not be allowed to procreate or operate heavy machinery.
Yes, Brightline has applied for a $6 billion federal loan, a federal Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing (RRIF) loan, from the U.S. Department of Transportation, but even if they get that loan (applying isn’t funding), they’re still $7 billion to $8 billion short.
Bottom line: Not happening.
Despite the facts, Brightline is touting all its progress and Las Vegas media are gobbling it up like pelicans at a herring buffet.
Our “paper of record,” the Las Vegas Review-Journal, publicist for the A’s (whose ballpark is a mere $1 billion short of funding) has been moonlighting for Brightline, breathlessly reporting on how project construction is moving forward!
The Review-Journal has a reliable source, too: Brightline West’s Bamboozler-in-Chief Michael Reininger.
“As you can see when you drive by the site, we’re building today; it’s underway,” Reininger told the Review-Journal. “It’s no longer a conversation, we’re manufacturing trains, we’re building buildings, we’re starting the construction of the infrastructure; it’s happening.”
Reininger is referencing work on a planned Las Vegas station located on Las Vegas Boulevard, between Warm Springs and Blue Diamond.
Further evidence this project without funding is definitely happening? Reininger claims Brightline West trains are being built at a Siemens factory in Germany.
Basically, Brightline is running a train involving Siemens and the Las Vegas Review-Journal is enthusiastically on board, no questions asked.
Good luck getting that mental picture out of your head.
Why, you may ask, would a company begin construction despite the fact that funding isn’t there, nor will it be?
Why are the A’s putting on their dog-and-pony show at the Tropicana site? Why did Dream Las Vegas start without funding? Why did Echelon? Why did All Net move dirt around for a decade? It’s to maintain the illusion something is valuable or moving forward, to get others on board (including the media).
In the world of grifting, of long cons, it’s called “salting the mine.” In the old-timey mining days, grifters would sprinkle a small amount of gold into a worthless mine so investors would find it and think they’d struck pay dirt.
Construction provides specificity. Specificity is a con artist’s camouflage, creating the illusion of truth. Specificity bypasses skepticism, creating the illusion of expertise to distract from impossible claims.
The truth is Brightline is Bleutech Park. It’s a collective delusion, enabled and amplified and emboldened by piss-poor journalism.
Plans and promises and renderings and saying things confidently aren’t funding.
We said this for a decade as All Net perpetuated its con. We’ve been saying this since Brightline first made its announcement about the high-speed train to Las Vegas. Somebody has to show Las Vegas isn’t full of gullible rubes.
Las Vegas may have been built on boundless optimism, but it wasn’t built on stupid.
Brightline is playing us for fools, but you know better because you have excellent taste in blogs, but you also have a brain, the ability to discern fact from fantasy, something our local journalists seem to be lacking, all due respect.
Leave your thoughts on “Brightline Train That Was Never Happening is Now 79% More Never Happening”
3 Comments