Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who had earlier seemed to be the biggest supporter in the U.S. Senate for a magnetic-levitation (Maglev) train from Las Vegas to Anaheim, is now pooh-poohing such a system, favoring instead a high-speed, diesel-electric line from Sin City to Victorville.
Besides the “yuck” factor–I mean, come on: have you been to Victorville?–what's most interesting about Reid choosing the proposed $5 million billion DesertXpress over what Republicans in Congress mocked as the “Sin Express” Maglev (whose cost is now pegged at $12 million billion but, at 300 mph, it's trains are twice as fast as its competitor) is who is pushing DesertXpress in Nevada. It's GOP power player Sig Rogich, who recently was named a
leader of a group of Republicans backing Reid's bid for re-election in
2010, according to the Associated Press.
But the apparent setback for the Maglev has not deterred the equally heavy hitters plotting a Treasure Island-to-Pirates of the Caribbean levitated train, according to the Las Vegas Sun. Bruce Aguilera, an executive with the Bellagio and chairman of
the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, and Neil Cummings, president of the American Magline Group consortium that would build the line, vow to press on and lobby their own friends in D.C.
Heck, after 150 years of this high-speed, Caesar's Palace-to-Magic Kingdom talk, wouldn't it be funny if both systems got built, with parallel lines carved through the desert between here and Hoover Dam? Funny in a total waste of taxpayer dollars way, of course.
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In any event, Anaheim is pushing ahead plans for a gleaming new transportation hub with
or without a bullet train–levitated or otherwise–dropping off
hungover losers from the Wheel of Fortune slots. After all, a
traditional high-speed train from Anaheim to San Francisco still
appears to be a go . . . for now.
But the $179 million first phase of the Anaheim Regional
Transportation Intermodal Center, or ARTIC–which joint partners the
city and Orange County Transportation Authority expect to be open ona 16-acre plot south of the Honda Center by 2013–is being designed for existing ground transportation and Metrolink and Amtrak trains the currently serve a station near Angel Stadium.
Bold prediction: If the city sticks with the ARTIC acronym, scores of
future fourth graders in Anaheim schools will mispell “arctic” on
spelling tests.
Bold compromise: Build the high-speed, diesel-electric line to
Victorville, then have folks hop on a Maglev for the rest of the ride
to Sleeping Beauty's Castle.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.