The first high-speed train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas

“We are building the first high-speed rail route in the history of our country. “It starts here,” US President Joe Biden said on Friday during a visit to Las Vegas. The United States should have “the fastest, safest, and greenest rail transportation in the world.”

BrightLine West express trains are supposed to cover a distance of 350 kilometers between Las Vegas in Nevada and the greater Los Angeles area in California in two hours and ten minutes, about twice the speed of cars. The line will be operated by private railway company Brightline, which already offers a new rail link between Miami and Orlando in Florida on the US east coast.

Replacement of three million cars

The Biden government, a rail fan, wants to donate up to $3 billion to the Bright Line West project. The track is scheduled to be completed in 2028, in time for the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles that same year.

It is expected that there will be eleven million passengers every year. Biden said Friday that the bullet trains would move three million vehicles off the often-crowded interstate between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.

A high-speed train route between Los Angeles and San Francisco is also planned. However, the project has been repeatedly delayed and its costs have ballooned, and it is now also scheduled to advance with $3 billion in federal funds.

Ten railway projects in the United States

In all, Biden provided funds totaling $8.2 billion for 10 important rail projects in the country on Friday. The money comes from an infrastructure package passed by Congress in 2021, which provides a total of $66 billion for rail transportation.

Passenger trains in the United States currently run slowly and quite irregularly; For decades, cars and airplanes took precedence. In the fight against climate change, the US government wants to change that and double passenger numbers by 2040.

Biden himself was a fan of rail travel during his 36 years as a US senator, commuting by train between Washington and his home in Delaware. That’s why the 81-year-old US Democrat has the nickname “Amtrak Joe” – based on the name of the railway company Amtrak.