Wes Edens has broken ground on Brightline West, his $12 billion Las Vegas-to-SoCal railway, aided by billions from the Biden Administration. But building more high-speed lines like this one won’t be easy.
By Alan Ohnsman, Forbes Staff
Under a blazing morning Las Vegas sun, billionaire Wes Edens and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg threw a party this week to mark the start of construction of Brightline West, the first private high-speed railway in the U.S., driving yellow spikes into a section of track.
Now comes the hard part. The $12 billion project is three years behind his original schedule — delayed by the pandemic and final environmental approvals — but if construction goes as fast as the billionaire cofounder of Fortress Investment Group promises, it'll open in time to speed travelers across the desert at 200 miles per hour from Sin City to Southern California in time for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
“The timeline is both realistic and achievable,” Edens told Forbes. “The impact of this is going to be long-lasting and prodigious. And I want it to be successful because I want the next one and the next one and the next one to happen.”
If he manages to build it on time and within budget, the 218-mile project from Las Vegas to Rancho Cucamonga – a small city east of Los Angeles linked to the sprawling metropolis by a commuter rail line – could be a catalyst for high-speed trains in the U.S. It’s on a fast construction schedule to open years ahead of the $128 billion high-speed train line California began building almost a decade ago – and that won’t connect San Francisco to Los Angeles until the 2040s. Brightline, which also operates a Florida railway between Orlando and Miami, expects 11 million one-way passengers a year to use the electric train, estimating it will slash travel time between L.A. and Las Vegas to three hours or less versus five hours or more by car. And it’s intended to do so with dramatically lower carbon emissions by being all-electric. The company estimates the railway will cut an estimated 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide by eliminating 3 million car trips annually between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Wes Edens, center left, and U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, center right, hammer ceremonial railroad spikes to mark the start of Brightline West construction in Las Vegas.
Brightline“I believe that when this project is complete it's going to open the floodgates for American expectations around high-speed rail,” Buttigieg told Forbes. “This is important because it establishes that it can be done here (in Las Vegas) and it can be done here in the United States of America.”
The groundbreaking site, a scrubby, empty desert lot next to the 15 freeway and near the Las Vegas Strip, will be home to Brightline West’s main station, as well as future retail and residential projects Edens envisions. “It’ll be unrecognizable if you come back in a few years,” he said.
More than half of the project’s cost ($6.5 billion) is covered with some form of federal support
That’s thanks in part to one of its major backers: the train-loving Biden Administration. Late last year, the administration awarded Brightline West a $3 billion grant out of its $1 trillion 2021 infrastructure law. And in January, it also provided $2.5 billion in public activity bonds, a tax-exempt financing option for major private projects that benefit the public. Including a previous $1 billion private activity bond Brightline West got during the Trump Administration, more than half of the project’s cost ($6.5 billion) is covered with some form of federal support. The remaining $5.5 billion has been raised privately with “equity and other debt mechanisms,” said Ben Porritt, a Brightline senior vice president. He declined to identify private investors.
“The federal funding coming into this project came from a very competitive process. It was not done lightly,” Buttigieg said. “They had to hit all sorts of marks to qualify both for the $3 billion in grants and $3.5 billion in financing that's coming to support this project. We wouldn't be here if we didn't believe in it.”
Edens, who Forbes estimates is worth $3.9 billion and co-owns the Milwaukee Bucks NBA and Aston Villa F.C. teams, is also investing his own money in the project. “I've actually put my money where my mouth is. I've been investing in this project for a very long time,” he said.
DesertXpress
The Vegas train isn’t the end of Edens’ bullet train baron aspirations. Potential future projects include “the Texas triangle” — Dallas to Houston, Houston to San Antonio to Austin; Portland to Seattle; Atlanta to Charlotte; and Midwestern cities including Cleveland to Columbus, Edens said. Which is next?
“We’ve been contacted by a lot of different governors who are curious”
“We’re so focused on this right now we haven’t picked the next one. But I’ll say this. We've been contacted by a lot of different governors who are curious,” he said. “I think there could easily be a handful of these that turn into real projects in the next 12 to 24 months.”
But Edens may not easily find another high-density intercity route that can be done with the same favorable circumstances working in Brightline West’s favor. A group of private investors first conceived of the rail project in 2005 as DesertXpress, and spent years securing land and routing approval to run trains along Highway 15 through the Mojave Desert. But even though they were backed by Ray LaHood, the transportation secretary under Obama, and former U.S. Senator Harry Reid, they weren’t able to raise sufficient funds to get it built. That gave Edens, a self-described train nerd, the opportunity to acquire the rights in 2018 through his Fortress Investment Group.
Brightline West will be built in the median of U.S. Interstate 15, with electric trains running at up to 200 miles per hour.
Brightline“The advantage they have here is that all of the environmental work was done. All of the land had been purchased,” LaHood told Forbes. “So when they started this process, a lot of the expense and expensive items were complete for them.”
“The advantage they have here is that all of the environmental work was done. All of the land had been purchased”
In 2007, Fortress also bought a freight rail line in southern Florida that gave rise to Brightline’s first passenger railway. Last year, the company added new dedicated tracks from Orlando to Miami that allow trains to run up to 125 mph – the lower range of what’s typically thought of as high-speed rail. It expects 4 million people to use the Florida service this year and 8 million annually from 2026.
Operating that system is helping Brightline learn how to run a tourist- and business-traveler-oriented railway ahead of its West Coast project. Though the LA–Las Vegas line won’t open for four years, track construction is to happen at a dramatic pace.
“We're going to build all that in about a 12-month window,” Keith Tarkalson, a regional manager for construction firm Stacy Witbeck that will be laying the Brightline West tracks, told Forbes in 2023. Work is to happen simultaneously in three different segments, including Las Vegas, Rancho Cucamonga and around Victorville, California.
The 218-mile project, including double tracks in some sections to allow trains to pass each other, will require first laying 2.2 million tons of gravel and other ballast materials. Then the company will layer on top 700,000 rail ties and 63,000 tons of steel rails sourced from U.S. suppliers.
Most of Brightline West will run at surface level down the middle of the 15 freeway. Protective walls will be installed on either side of the tracks to prevent collisions with cars and trucks that stray off the highway.
The railway is designed to avoid crossing intersections that can be deadly for drivers and pedestrians, but environmentalists are concerned its concrete highway barriers will prevent bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, mountain lions and bobcats from moving back and forth across the freeway — assuming they aren’t first crushed by cars and trucks. To address that issue, Brightline has worked with California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife and the California Department of Transportation to include three crossing points.
Brightline
The company expects to employ more than 10,000 construction workers to build the system, and eventually create at least 1,000 permanent jobs when it’s up and running.
Aside from its potential impact on ginning up broader interest in high-speed trains in the U.S., Brightline West is just the latest in a string of recent multibillion-dollar bets in Las Vegas including the $1.9 billion Allegiant Stadium that became the home of the NFL’s Raiders in 2020, the $2.3 billion Las Vegas Sphere and a $1.5 billion baseball stadium planned for the Athletics when they relocate to the city in 2028.
Despite Edens’ desire to add more rail lines across the U.S., it’ll be tough to replicate circumstances benefiting Brightline West. Critically, come January, he may not find a White House ally who shares his passion for rail travel and is willing to help fund it.
“The credit has to be given to Biden,” said LaHood. “He put significant dollars into rail. And that’s the kind of leadership it takes to attract private dollars.”
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