High Speed Trains

A potential corridor for passenger trains between Las Vegas and the Los Angeles area has become part of a federal initiative to modernize the nation's rail networks and develop high-speed service between cities. Thursday's announcement, however, might doom a 30-year-old proposal to build a high-tech magnetic levitation, or "maglev," train from Anaheim to Las Vegas if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) gets his way.

The Acela Express, Amtrak's high-speed train, was shut down indefinitely Friday because of brake problems, leaving thousands of travelers scrambling for other transportation. Amtrak pressed slower trains into use in the Northeast corridor between Washington, New York and Boston. Acela service will be suspended at least through Wednesday because of cracks in disc brakes, said Amtrak's chief operating officer, Bill Crosbie.

A partnership of government and industry in southern Nevada plans to spend $1.3 billion to build the nation's first super-fast train. Where do they want to put it after more than two decades of effort? From Las Vegas to Primm, a three-hotel sideshow on the Nevada-California border. It's best known for an outlet mall, the giant Desperado roller coaster and a bullet-riddled 1934 Ford that carried the infamous Bonnie and Clyde to their deaths. Critics say the proposal is a train to nowhere.

So-called Baby Bullet trains that can make the trip from San Jose to San Francisco in less than an hour at speeds reaching 75 mph are expected to start transporting commuters in June. Caltrain released the schedules Thursday. The trains will travel on Caltrain's tracks, stopping at just four stations that were chosen because they have the highest ridership on the Bay-Area system, a Caltrain spokeswoman said. Current trains reach a maximum of about 60 mph between some stations, she said.

This is a nation addicted to speed. And to ride Japan's super Shinkansen, or bullet train, is to zip into the future at speeds reaching 186 miles per hour. From Nagoya to Tokyo, the scenery whizzes past in a dizzying blur as the sleek engine with its bullet-like nose floats the cars along elevated tracks -- without the clickety-clack of the lumbering U.S. trains that make you feel as though you're chugging along like cattle to market.

A proposed Anaheim-to-Las Vegas high-speed train became a hot topic as Congress prepared to pass an economic recovery bill. In reality, not a word about the train appears in the 1,000-plus page, $787-billion bill that Congress passed Friday night. However, the bill does provide $8 billion for unspecified high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects, more than three times as much as allocated in earlier versions of the legislation. "I guess they hit the jackpot," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.

A long-standing proposal to build a high-speed maglev train from Las Vegas to Anaheim will finally receive $45 million in federal funds that were approved several years ago to pay for the project's final planning and environmental analysis, the Nevada governor's office announced Wednesday. Gov. Jim Gibbons said the Federal Railroad Administration will administer the money that was earmarked by Congress for the first phase of the system, which would extend from Las Vegas to Primm on the Nevada-California state line.

For a quarter century it has been a California dream on one drafting board or another -- a bullet train system so novel, environmentally friendly and fleet that it could reshape transportation in the car-crazy Golden State. Now, state voters will be asked Nov. 4 to provide some locomotion by approving nearly $10 billion as a down payment toward the ultimate vision of an 800-mile high-speed rail network.

It would place California on the cutting edge of transportation in America. It would be a job creator. Environmentally clean. And fun. But can we afford it? The state is essentially broke and running on red ink. School and health programs already have been cut, and more slashing seems inevitable. The economy is sputtering, and tax revenues are tanking. Capitol politicians are gridlocked -- have been for years -- on how to honestly balance the state's books.

The idea has been kicked around for years -- a high-speed train to zip passengers from SoCal to Sin City and then boomerang them back, bypassing the sea of brake lights flooding the highway to and from Las Vegas. Originally, even the most farfetched scenarios didn't include Victorville -- a desert pit-stop for thousands of gamblers en route to Las Vegas -- as the starting point for such turgid dreams.