Las Vegas to LA high-speed project gets new partner: China

XpressWest is a privately owned company, while China Railway worldwide USA’s ownership consists of a consortium of subsidiaries from Chinese state firms, including China Railway Group and China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation.

In a press release, Xpress West, formerly known as DesertXpress, announced the new partnership with China Railway global United States of America Co. with an initial $100 million investment, though it’s not clear where the money is coming from, how much the full project would cost and how it would get future funding. XpressWest is a private interstate high-speed passenger railroad company led by the Marnell Companies, which also specializes in architecture and construction in the United States gaming capital.

XpressWest said the decision to form the joint venture was “the culmination of years of work”.

The old news is that the proposed 230-mile Las Vegas route along the 15 Freeway suffers from some of the same disconnected planning that brought L.A.’s Metro Rail within about 1.5 miles of Los Angeles worldwide Airport (LAX).

The plan calls for bullet trains that would start in the Resort Corridor in Las Vegas and end in Southern California, with stops in Victorville and Palmdale. China’s high-speed rail network has seen explosive growth in recent years as the nation’s economy boomed.

The deal was announced in a joint statement at a government forum in Beijing, and is the latest in a series of deeper Sino-American business ties to be unveiled before President Xi Jinping visits the United States next week.

In fact, China isn’t the only Asian country looking to bring its style of high-speed rail stateside.

China, host to the world’s longest high speed railway system, is all hands in for building a high speed railway in the USA between Las Vegas and the greater Los Angeles area. It now has the approval of regulators to cover about 190 miles from Las Vegas to the Mojave Desert city of Victorville, California, about a 100-mile drive northeast of Los Angeles. The companies hope to launch construction as early as September 2016.

Back home, China has built more than 17,000 km of domestic high-speed rail lines, according to the local Xinhua News Agency.