Taxpayers railroaded: slow train.

• Author: Shackford, Scott
• Position: Citings - Brief article

Proposals for high-speed rail to carry tourists from Southern California to Las Vegas are not new, but XpressWest's plan appears to be an especially risky gamble.

The company is looking for a $6.5 billion federal loan to build the rail line, the western end of which would be near Victorville, California, 80 miles from Los Angeles. Southern Californians would have to drive through a significant amount of traffic, covering a distance equal to one-third of the ride to Las Vegas, before parking and boarding the train.

An August report from the Reason Foundation (which publishes reason) noted that the market for such a train is extremely speculative and that the company's study is years out of date, relying on tourist traffic estimates that turned out to be overly...