The Hyperloop is coming to Las Vegas

Elon Musk’s radical transport system will be tested in Nevada in 2016. It has been recently reported that the Hyperloop is coming to Nevada for testing. Hyperloop Technologies and the Nevada Governor’s office selected 50 acres in North Las Vegas at Apex Industrial park to test out the prototype system. This proposed system will reach speeds to 700 plus MPH or San Francisco to LA in 30 minutes. This system will be tested by in Las Vegas. A rival test will be done by a separate company Hyperloop Transportation Technology north of Los Angeles. The Hyperloop plan will be elevated above ground and it will carry tubes powered mainly by solar energy. There may be some hic-ups in the engineering, but Elon Muck Hyperloop Technologies and the rival LA group Hyperloop Transportation Technology are both pushing this technology forward. There always seems to be a reference of the SF to LA, but this could work Dallas to Houston, or maybe NY to Washington. It is a rival to the California High Speed Rail and the Xpress West High Speed train from Los Angeles (Victorville to Las Vegas). The Cal High Speed Rail has broken ground in the Central Valley, but there are not enough funds currently to move it along to Palmdale. The Hyperloop has estimated that the cost per passenger from SF to LA maybe under $30, while the high speed rail will need $billions to complete will cost more per passenger. Let’s let this play out and see whose technology and if the State and Federal Government will approve a Hyperloop since they have already spent money and have voter approval on the Rail line.

XpressWest High Speed Rail which was called DesertXpress is Beginning to Take Shape

The plan is a brainchild of Marnell Corrao Associates a privately held company and it is backed and proposed by private funds. The initial plan is to connect from Victorville in San Bernadino County to Las Vegas with a connection to Los Angeles in Palmdale, Ca. It has further proposal to connect to Phoenix Arizona, Salt Lake City, and Denver Colorado According to reports the cost of the Victorville to Las Vegas section will cost $7 billion with $1.4 Billion coming from the Federal Railroad administration. The 50 mile connection between Victorville to Palmdale is part of an agreement with the LA County Metro Transportation Authority to explore a connection to Metorlink and potentially the Cal High Speed Rail. This looks to be a parallel construction. The initial proposed route between Victorville to Las Vegas looks to run along Hwy 15.This route is largely uninhabited desert land. Most of this land is owned by the Bureau of Land Management (Federal Government) and National Park Service. The uniqueness about the initial route is that there are no proposed stops between the two cities, so it looks to be a straight shot to Vegas. Further reports indicate that the investor group has applied for a loan as of Oct 2011 for a $4.9 billion through the federal Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing program. The loan and funding are far from approval as Senate and House leaders has indicated the project is a taxpayer risk. As recent as July 2013 news report indicated the loan was suspended. This essentially means denial of the loan, but the developer indicated they are proceeding without firm funding in place. The most recent report is interest from Chinese firms, but that is to build and operate the train, with no indication of Chinese funding. Thus it looks like a project under development costing billions with no firm plan in mind to accomplish it. It will most likely be part of the Presidential nomination cycle as Nevada is early on the primary list. Don’t rush to buy the land just yet.

China firms sign deal for high-speed Las Vegas-Los Angeles rail link ahead of Xi's U.S. visit

Press Release regarding High Speed Rail from Las Vegas to Los Angeles BEIJING | BY BRENDA GOH A unit of China's CRRC Corp, the world's biggest train maker by revenue, on Thursday joined a group of its domestic peers in agreeing a deal to help build a high-speed link from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, underlining the rail giant's lofty overseas ambitions. Announced in a joint statement by the Chinese firms and U.S. partner XpressWest at a government forum in Beijing, the deal is the latest in a series of deeper Sino-American business ties to be unveiled before President Xi Jinping visits the United States next week. Computer maker Dell Inc said it will invest $125 billion in China, and new bilateral investment treaty offers have been exchanged. CRRC, formed from a state-driven merger of China's two largest train makers, is among a large group of the country's rail firms that has inked an accord for the project with XpressWest, a venture set up by Las Vegas-based hotel and casino developer Marnell Companies. Investment terms weren't disclosed. Gary Wong, a Hong Kong-based analyst at brokerage Guotai Junan, estimated that the project could be worth $5 billion. He said that although it would likely offer the many Chinese firms involved little financial benefit, it was significant for their long-term goals. "If this opens up the U.S. market for them, opportunities for future expansion will increase. And if (their technology) is used in the United States, it will be easier for them to sell to other countries," he said. CRRC is leading China's aggressive pursuit of overseas high-speed rail deals in competition with traditional suppliers such as Germany's Siemens AG and France's Alstom SA. Beijing recently clinched contracts in Russia, although it has faced hurdles in Mexicoand Indonesia due to bureaucratic flip-flops in those countries. US POTENTIAL The United States is a key target for China's rail industry, even though policymakers have been split over the need for high-speed rail and some have taken a dim view of Chinese involvement in potentially strategic deals. Most of a dozen or so U.S. projects lined up have struggled to gain traction, leaving the country far behind Europe and Asia in this area. XpressWest won the green light for the 230-mile high-speed line linking Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 2011 and applied for a federal loan in 2010, according to the company's website. It did not say whether its loan application had been successful. The U.S. company didn't respond to calls or emails seeking comment on the project after the partnership deal with the Chinese firms - grouped in a Nevada-based venture called China Railway International U.S.A. - was announced. XpressWest and the Chinese firms said in their statement that the accord would help accelerate the project without disclosing details of how it would achieve that. Additional regulatory approvals will be required before the construction begins, expected early as September 2016. "The United States market is huge because the fact is that their railway tracks and facilities are aging and need upgrading," Cao Gangcai, CRRC's vice chief economist, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday, before the XpressWest deal was announced. The company plans to grow its share of revenue from work overseas to 30 percent within the next five years, he said. Having completed its merger in May, it booked first-half revenue of 91.8 billion yuan ($14.42 billion), only 12 percent of which was booked overseas. "We want to attain the position we deserve in the global market...There is no other company on earth that is able to simultaneously research and produce high-speed trains, electric multiple units, subways," he said.