While the skyrocketing cost of the California High-Speed Rail project has garnered national headlines, a soaring price tag could also derail plans for another high-speed rail project planned for Southern California.
Brightline West is developing a high-speed rail project connecting Las Vegas with Rancho Cucamonga in the Inland Empire. From there, passengers would be able to continue to Union Station in downtown Los Angeles through the Metrolink regional rail service.
Most of the 218-mile project would be built in the median of the 15 Free- way through the Mojave Desert, which would avoid the billions of dollars in land acquisition costs that the California High-Speed Rail project has faced.
But in recent months, the Brightline project has faced two significant setbacks. Late last year, Brightline disclosed a huge jump in the projected cost, to $21.5 billion from $16 billion, citing rising materials and construction costs due in part to the data center building boom.
Then in September, several entities affiliated with parent Brightline Holdings filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as an operating Brightline high-speed train system in South Florida has faced financial difficulties. (Brightline Trains, the specific entity in charge of that train system, was able to achieve a debt restructuring and avoided filing for Chapter 11.)
While Brightline West executives have repeatedly said the troubles in Florida have no direct bearing on the financial condition of Brightline West, it does point to the difficulty in running a profitable train service with a high-speed component, according to Baruch Feigenbaum, managing director of transportation for the Playa Vista-based Reason Foundation think tank. That in turn could make obtaining funding for the Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga line more challenging, he added.
Brightline West is now awaiting word from the administration of President Donald Trump on its application for a $6 billion federal loan to jump-start project construction. More than $11 billion in potential private sector funding likely hinges on obtaining that loan.
In the meantime, project completion and the start of passenger service has been pushed back from early 2028 to at least late 2029 and possibly to 2030.
Growing project, rising costs
The concept of high-speed rail transit between Las Vegas and Southern California has been around for decades.
The current project dates back about 20 years. First called Desert Express, it was set to run down the median of the 15 Freeway between Las Vegas and Victorville in the Mojave Desert for a total of about 185 miles. The cost was initially put at $5 billion. Over the next decade, the project morphed into Desert Xpress and the cost rose to nearly $8 billion, though it did manage to secure some key federal approvals.
Fortress Investment Group, parent of Brightline Holdings, acquired the project from the investors behind Desert Xpress in 2018.
The company in charge of the project was renamed Brightline West.
One of the first things Brightline West did was to extend the route nearly 35 miles through the Cajon Pass to Rancho Cucamonga. This got the project into the Los Angeles Basin with a total travel time of just over two hours.
It also addressed a key ridership problem with the previous proposal that would have forced Angelenos to travel at least 90 minutes to Victorville to catch the high-speed train.
Getting into the Southern California market would allow Brightline West to tap into the huge market for travel to Las Vegas. According to figures last year from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, nearly one-third of the 9 million annual tourists to Las Vegas came from Southern California in 2023.
The route extension to Rancho Cucamonga, along with some cost increases, pushed the overall project cost up to $12 billion in 2019.
By 2023, the cost had risen yet again to $16 billion as COVID-19-induced supply-chain shortages spiked prices for construction materials.
Link to L.A.
The southern terminus of the Brightline West line at Rancho Cucamonga is intended to share a station with Metrolink, allowing passengers to connect with the regional rail line to Union Station. The travel time on Metrolink’s San Bernardino line between Rancho Cucamonga and Union Station is approximately 80 minutes, bringing the overall travel time between Las Vegas and Union Station for potential Brightline West passengers to about 3.5 hours.
By comparison, car travel time between Los Angeles and Las Vegas can take anywhere from four to eight hours, depending on traffic.
While details on just how the Brightline/Metrolink connection would work have long been vague, a spokesman for Brightline West confirmed last month that Brightline West and Metrolink officials have been in discussions about this connection.
“As Brightline West begins operations, additional Metrolink service could be considered to accommodate connecting passengers, particularly on weekends,” the spokesman said.
The spokesman added that ticket purchasing interconnectivity between the two systems could also be enhanced, making it possible for passengers to purchase tickets for both lines in one transaction. But the spokesman did not reference any discounts on Metrolink fares for Brightline West passengers. The one-way Metrolink fare between Rancho Cucamonga and Union Station is about $10 for regular service and $13 for express service with fewer stops.
According to financial documents submitted by Brightline West, the standard one-way ticket price for the high-speed train from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga would be $119, while premium fares would be $133.
Ridership boost?
And there’s an additional issue with Metrolink – at least for the near future. Due to tighter funding from some local transit authorities, Metrolink has been cutting service, most recently implementing a 40% reduction in weekend service across its Southern California system. Whether any of this service is restored by 2030 is an open question.
The Reason Foundation’s Feigenbaum said that the connection to Metrolink remains a weak point with Brightline’s plan: “The key to ridership for high-speed rail systems is a direct link to the centers of major urban areas,” he said. “While there are things that Brightline can do to facilitate the link to Metrolink, there is no substitute for that direct link.”
He said adding Metrolink service along the San Bernardino line and adding moving walk- ways at the Rancho Cucamonga station for a faster connection could help, but it probably wouldn’t be enough to lure many people out of their cars between L.A. and Las Vegas.
Prospects for project completion
Of more immediate concern is whether the Brightline West high-speed rail project will get built at all. That may hinge on whether Brightline West obtains the $6 billion federal loan it applied for last year through the Department of Transportation’s Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program.
Brightline had originally planned this sum as a bank facility but had to switch to the federal loan approach as the overall project cost soared.
Now, according to Bloomberg, the $6 billion bank facility depends on securing the federal loan. Another $5.5 billion in equity financing also appears to hinge on the federal loan. Bloomberg reported that in April, the head of the Federal Railroad Administration had said the government was “interested” in putting money into the project.
As of now, Brightline has about $5.5 billion in funding allocated for the project, much of that through “private activity bonds,” which are tax-exempt municipal debt securities issued by government entities.
If the federal loan gets approved and the other follow-on financings come through, Brightline could pull together most of the $21.5 billion it needs to cover the project cost.
But that assumes the cost doesn’t rise again.
