Work on Las Vegas high-speed to begin this year

Environmental approvals for the proposed $4-billion DesertXpress high-speed rail project between Las Vegas and Southern California are taking longer than expected, but executives with the project said March 25 they expect construction to begin this year, the Las Vegas Sun reports.

"It’s all just process
and working through the details," DesertXpress Enterprises President Tom
Stone said in a media briefing on the project. "No environmental showstoppers
have been identified."

Last year, developers of
the 185-mile rail line that would link Las Vegas with Victorville, Calif., said
they hoped they would get final environmental approvals by the end of the first
quarter of 2010 and that they would be able to break ground by summer. But
Stone said the process is running three to four months behind what they had
hoped, although they still expect a groundbreaking before the end of the year.

Construction is expected to
take four years, meaning that revenue service for the train could begin by late
2014.

The project includes the
construction of two parallel grade-level tracks across the Mohave Desert,
mostly along the I-15 corridor and the accompanying electrical catenary.

Stone explained that five federal
agencies are a part of the process that eventually would lead to the issuance
of a Record of Decision that would give developers of DesertXpress the green
light to begin construction.

The Federal Railroad
Administration, a division of the U.S. Department of Transportation, is the
lead agency on the adoption process. Cooperating agencies that are
participating include the Federal Highway Administration (another
Transportation Department agency), the Bureau of Land Management, the Surface
Transportation Board (formerly the Interstate Commerce Commission) and the
National Park Service.

The FHA is involved because
much of the route is within the right-of-way of Interstate 15 while the BLM
controls most of the other land through which the line would pass. The Park
Service is involved because one of the alignment alternatives could pass
through a small portion of the Mohave National Preserve in California, just
south of the Nevada border.

The route between Las Vegas
and Victorville includes several alignment alternatives and there are four
potential sites for a station in Las Vegas and three in Victorville that must
be resolved. Stone said the agencies need to determine which alternatives
present the least environmental impact.

While the federal agencies work
on the Record of Decision, DesertXpress Enterprises is narrowing the field to
select its implementation team partner — a process that began last August. The
implementation team will be responsible for the final engineering,
construction, operations and maintenance of the train system as well as
participate as a financial partner for the project.

Stone said DesertXpress
received 12 proposals from prospective partners. Executives cut the field to
six and there are now three finalists. He did not identify what companies are
in the running.

Architectural and
engineering firms that have worked on the project so far include Korve
Engineering, EarthTech, AECom, EDAW, URS, Stantec and Marnell Consulting.

Private investors have paid
for DesertXpress’ costs to date and construction will be financed with private
equity combined with long-term public- and private-sourced debt with the
repayment coming from private sources. No taxpayer money has been used,
although executives say they are considering federal loans.

When construction begins,
Stone said he expects there would be multiple construction sites throughout the
rail corridor at any one time. One of those sites would be a train station in
Victorville. Three prospective sites are under consideration, all within close
proximity of I-15.

A model of the Victorville
station was unveiled at the briefing and Stone noted that it is being designed
to allow trains to pass through the structure in anticipation of the line
extending west to Palmdale, where it would connect with the proposed California
high-speed rail line and a route between Sylmar and Bakersfield.

The model of the
Victorville train station includes a 15,000-space parking area, some of it
surface parking and some of it within a parking garage. It’s 1 1/2 times larger
than Disneyland’s parking lot.