Vegas Dreams of Tourists Hitting Town at 300 M.P.H.

LAS VEGAS —  If the dreams of some politicians and business leaders in this gambling mecca come true, millions of people will be whisked from Southern California to Las Vegas on super-speed trains by the end of this century.

The city is spending about $1.3 million (most of it federal money) to study the feasibility of such a train service. Local enthusiasts are certain that the studies will yield positive results. “I’m confident it’s going to happen because it makes sense,” said Bill Briare, mayor of Las Vegas. “If it’s inevitable that this technology is going to be accepted in the United States--and I think it is--then the sooner somebody gets started, the better, and it might as well be Las Vegas.”

Briare referred to magnetically levitated trains, now being developed in Japan and West Germany, that are capable of top speeds of 250 to 300 miles per hour.

Ridership Projections

A recently completed ridership study predicted that such trains would carry at least 4 million passengers a year between Las Vegas and a proposed Southern California terminal near the intersection of Interstates 10 and 15 in Ontario.

A super-speed train would provide insurance against loss in case of the kind of gasoline shortage that cut sharply into automobile travel between Las Vegas and Southern California in 1973-74.

“We really got kicked in the shins by that gasoline crunch,” Briare said. “We don’t want that to happen again.” About 38% of the 12.8 million people who visited Las Vegas in 1984 came from Southern California, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

‘The Big Question’

Such a train might help to offset the loss of big-money gamblers to Atlantic City and of penny ante gamblers to the new California Lottery, some Las Vegas casino operators believe.

Although Las Vegas would benefit from super-speed train service, the advantages to Southern California are less clear.

“The big question that needs to be answered here is the socioeconomic one,” said Wes McDaniel, executive director of the San Bernardino (County) Associated Governments. “The more successful the train is in luring people to Vegas, presumably, the greater will be the outflow of dollars from California to Nevada. So the positives and negatives have to be very carefully studied.”

Briare and others have been pushing the super-speed train idea for a decade but their efforts received a setback early last year when Michael Daly, director of the Las Vegas super-speed program, resigned after allegations were made that he limited competition for a $50,000 legal contract to favor the law firm of his old boss, former Democratic Nevada Rep. James Santini, who since has become a Republican.

Studies done under Daly’s direction were, “shall we say, self-serving,” said San Bernardino County Supervisor John Joyner, who represents the high desert area through which the train would run.

After Daly departed, “we decided to take a hard, professional approach to the subject and find out, once and for all, if it was possible or not,” said Ashley Hall, Las Vegas city manager.

Robert E. Parsons, a rail specialist at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and former associate administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration, was hired to coordinate a new set of feasibility studies.

These studies include ridership, the technology to be employed, socioeconomic benefits to Nevada and Southern California, environmental problems and financing.

Source of Financing

Most of the money for the studies is coming from the U.S. Department of Transportation, largely because of the efforts of Sen. Paul Laxalt (R-Nev.) and a former Democratic senator, Howard Cannon.

“Our role is to be the honest broker,” Parsons said during an interview at his City Hall office. “If we see anything that’s an insurmountable problem, we stop the program.”

So far that has not happened, and the studies are nearing completion.

“I’m beginning to get a little bit excited,” the low-key consultant said. “It looks like we have a market.”

The source of this excitement is a recently completed analysis by Barton Aschman and Associates predicting that super-speed service would attract at least 4 million passengers a year by the end of the century and 5 million by the year 2025. The study assumed a round-trip fare of $65.

About half of these would be new riders; the other half would be lured away from buses, planes or automobiles, Barton Aschman said.

In 1984, about 68.5% of travel between Las Vegas and Ontario was by auto, according to the study. Another 16.9% was by bus (most of that by chartered bus), 14.3% by air and only 0.3% by Amtrak. The train trip takes between 6 1/2 and 7 1/2 hours one way.

Inaccurate Estimates

Parsons conceded that ridership forecasting is a “black art” and that the estimates often turn out to be too high, but he expressed confidence that the Barton Aschman numbers are “in the ballpark.” Mayor Barney Keeler of Barstow disagreed. Barstow is a possible stop on the super-speed train run.

“I just don’t see it,” Keeler said. “They’ve tried special trains to Vegas for years and none of them ever made any money. Some people might ride it once, just for the novelty of it, but families would never use it. They’d rather have their cars when they get there. The only thing that would make this go is another gas crisis.”

The technology to be used is being analyzed by the Canadian Institute of Guided Ground Transport at Queen’s University in Ontario.

Three magnetically levitated trains are being considered--two being developed under the auspices of the Japanese government, one by West Germany. Floating one to four inches above a guideway, these trains are propelled by a magnetic flow, the electricity coming from either from a third rail or from a series of transmission stations along the route.

Parsons said magnetically levitated trains are almost soundless, but some people along the proposed Las Vegas to Ontario route say they believe that the trains make a high piercing noise that can unhinge the mind.

Up to 300 M.P.H.

The trains can achieve top speeds of 250 to 300 m.p.h., although they would travel much slower in or near cities and as they crossed Cajon Pass and the other mountain passes between Southern California and Las Vegas.

Although both the Japanese and West German governments have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the so-called mag-lev’s, they still exist only on experimental test tracks in the two countries. None is in passenger service.

For this and other reasons, Parsons and the Canadian institute he hired are also looking at an advanced version of the French TGV train, which carries passengers between Paris and Lyons at speeds approaching 170 m.p.h.

The French train could be put into place sooner and would cost perhaps $500 million less than the estimated $2.5 billion cost of a mag-lev system, but Briare said that “common sense tells me steel wheel on steel rail is obsolete--we need a new technology.”

Environmental studies thus far have not turned up any major problems although, Parsons said, “We’ve got an oddball turtle (the Desert Tortoise) down there somewhere that we’ve got to be careful about” and he also is concerned about possible Indian relics along the route.

So far, no complaints have been received from Indian tribes, Parsons said, “but I don’t think anybody thinks we’re for real yet.”

The social and economic effects of super-speed train service in Southern California, a source of much disagreement, are being studied by Applied Economic Systems of Santa Barbara.

Strong Supporter

The Las Vegas to Ontario proposal has a few strong Southern California supporters, one of whom is Robert Ellingwood, who recently resigned as mayor of Ontario.

“There’s no question that mag-lev is the train of the future,” Ellingwood said. “It would certainly be wonderful for the (United States) if we could have the first mag-lev train here. . . . It would put us back in world leadership in rail.”

Ellingwood added, “It would definitely be a tourist attraction” that would attract much new business to Ontario.

But Ontario City Manager Roger Hughbanks is not so sure.

“I can definitely see some disadvantages,” Hughbanks said. “Additional traffic, air pollution and what I guess you could call social problems--what happens if we have 5,000 or 10,000 people parking in Ontario, jumping on the train and then returning, disgruntled, without their money?”

The train’s Nevada supporters say California would gain construction jobs while the line was being built and would gain permanent jobs if the maintenance facilities were located in Southern California and not in Las Vegas.

Parsons thinks the Las Vegas-Ontario train could be the start of a system of super-speed trains that would link San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles and San Francisco, a system he believes is badly needed to relieve freeway congestion.

Bothersome Statistic

Preliminary findings from the socioeconomic study suggest that, if the train were built, $10 would be spent in Las Vegas for every $1 spent in Southern California, a statistic that bothers many politicians.

“It could result in a severe drain on our local economy,” said Mayor Jon Mikels of Rancho Cucamonga, a new and fast-growing city in San Bernardino County.

Others argue that Californians will find their way to Las Vegas to gamble, with or without super-speed trains.

However, the project’s backers have a big selling job to do in San Bernardino County.

Deborah Barmack, an analyst for the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors, has been following super-speed train developments. “From the point of view of the supervisors, there’s very little in the project for us. . . . It looks like we’d have a big parking lot without much advantage. We’d only be interested if there were some gains in manufacturing jobs,” she said.

Barmack and others also suggested that many other transportation improvements would have priority over a super-speed train to Las Vegas.

“Any way you stack a couple of priority lists, mag-lev comes pretty far down,” she said.

Some of the biggest questions about the train project involve its financing, which is being studied by Robert J. Harmon and Associates of Washington.

For some time it was said that private capital would build and operate the line, a claim that also was made about the now-abandoned “bullet train” between Los Angeles and San Diego.

But the Harmon study has found that to be impractical.

Role of Government

“You do have to have some government participation in some form,” Parsons said.

The Harmon study has not been completed, but Parsons said it envisions three phases of financing.

In the first phase--the “dry period when you’re building the line but no revenue is coming in--there would be normal, up-front construction loans” from banks and other local lenders, according to Parsons.

These would be supported by revenue bonds--perhaps from the $1.25-billion pot the California Legislature established in 1982 to help with financing of the ill-fated “bullet train.” The State of Nevada, which has no such fund, presumably would have to establish one.

Larry Margolis, executive secretary of the California Rail Passenger Financing Commission, which would have to approve the issuance of California bonds for high-speed rail construction, said the commission has received no inquiries from supporters of the Las Vegas-Ontario project.

Margolis also said, “The argument about spending money to send Californians to Nevada to gamble would be a hard one to overcome.”

In the final financing phase, Parsons said, “once the line was operating, and generating revenue, it might be completely refinanced again and go completely private, with a payoff to the two states.”

But the consultant admitted that this is a complex financing scheme, with many possibilities for failure.

Preliminary Engineering

Parsons’ current worry is how to find $10 million to $15 million to finance the next phase--preliminary engineering work.

Briare said the federal government will provide the money, but Parsons thinks that is most unlikely, especially with Laxalt giving up his Senate seat.

When it has been suggested that Las Vegas hotel and casino operators, and other business people, should pay for this work, they turned away.

Said Parsons: “The trouble with a project like this is you have to look 20 years ahead and business people don’t usually do that. . . . If business is good now, if most of their rooms are full, they don’t worry about what might happen later.”

But McDaniel of the San Bernardino Associated Governments asked, “If Vegas is reluctant to put up the preliminary engineering money, why should California be interested in the project?”

There are many other questions, among them:

- Is Ontario the best location for the Southern California terminal, or should the train run instead to the San Fernando Valley or to northern Orange County?

- How would a route be found through the rapidly growing Victor Valley area that would not require the removal of large numbers of homes?

- Should there be stops in Barstow and Victorville?

- How would the Las Vegas and Southern California terminals be financed?

And many more.

Parsons’ contract calls for a final report to Las Vegas and to the Federal Railroad Administration by the end of next March. But he will ask for an extension until May or June.

The consultant hopes that a commission will be appointed to carry on the work, with representatives of both California and Nevada, but he is not sure this will be done.

“If the project looks good after all the studies are in, it’ll happen sooner or later,” Parsons said. “But there will probably be a hiatus because of the resistance from Southern California.”

PROPOSED HIGH-SPEED TRAIN ROUTE

A high-speed train operation has been proposed to run between Las Vegas and Ontario. While the route would parallel Interstate 15 much of the way, it is not certain exactly where the train would run through Victor Valley, northeast of San Bernardino. Three magnetically-levitated trains--two Japanese and one West German--are being considered. All three float above the guideway and are propelled by a magnetic flow that, in turn, is powered by electricity. Also under consideration is an advanced version of the French TGV steel-wheel on steel-track train, which presently carries passengers between Paris and Lyons at speeds of more than 160 mph. Here are some characteristics and some unanswered questions:

CHARACTERISTICS Distance: 230 miles

Time: 70-75 minutes

Top speed: 250 to 300 mph

Fare: $65 round-trip

Frequency of service: 30 round-trips per day on weekends, fewer during the week.

QUESTIONS Will the mag-lev technology work?

How many people would ride the train?

What will be the economic and social impact on Southern California?

Who will pay the estimated $2.5 billion it would take to build such a system?

What are the environmental problems?