Funding for Las Vegas Maglev Instead Going to Highway Construction
22 March 2010 - 8:00am
A $45 million federal earmark to help fund a maglev train between Los Angeles and Las Vegas is instead going to widening a freeway connection to the airport.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the announcement, saying that the decision had been made because of the greater impact on job creation.
"State transportation department officials said they didn't specifically request money be diverted from the maglev project, but they were happy the funds would go to a road project.
'Any bill that brings construction jobs to Nevada is good news,' NDOT spokesman Scott Magruder said."
Source:
Las Vegas Sun, March 20, 2010
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At a much larger economic scale, however, one mustn’t avoid calculating the tremendous and exceptional externalities of automobile dependency.
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Reasons for Maglev Losing Its Funding
$45 million was only going to go to lobbyists, out of town consultants and investment bankers and COULD NOT BE USED FOR CONSTRUCTION. Even if it could have been used for construction, which it could not, that would have paid for about one quarter to one half of a mile – based upon maglev cost estimates prepared by three different public agencies in this country
Congress actually shifted those funds to a real project in Las Vegas that will immediately get people to work
The maglev project was only going to extend 40 miles to Primm – it was not going to be environmentally cleared for construction beyond that point even if they had gotten the $45 million
They have no money to build it to Anaheim let alone to Primm
The major reason they did not ever receive the $45 million is that they never came up with the required 20% local matching funds – they tried to convince the Federal Railroad Administration to allow them to use “in-kind services” as the local match, not real private money – which they never committed
They were always many years away from being able to build anything even if they could have come up with the untold billions of dollars needed for it
The DesertXpress project will be able to start this year without any public grants – 200 miles to Victorville and soon thereafter another 50 miles to Palmdale
Just the first phase of DX creates approximately 50,000 years of construction employment, reaching about 20,000 workers at the peak of construction
Bad decision
What a bad decision. There was a reason that the federal government earmarked it for the train line in the first place. They're only looking at the short term benefits, not the long term re sustainability.