The US and China Just Made a Deal To Build High-Speed Rail Between LA and Vegas

Americans could one day soon cruise between two major cities in the western US on a mega-fast train at 150 mph, thanks to a new agreement between a private US venture and a consortium led by China Railway Group.


It’ll be called XpressWest, and it’ll link the 230 miles separating Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The train will get you there in 80 minutes, versus a four-hour car ride. Construction’s set to kick off next September, and comes on the heels of four years of negotiations. It’s China’s first high-speed rail project in the US, and Bloomberg reports that $100 million in initial capital will get the project off the ground. (Though that’ll be just a teeny drop in the bucket—the project is expected to cost upwards to $7 billion). To date, only private sector funds have covered the bill, but the project’s applied for loans with the Federal Railroad Administration.
In a press release, XpressWest and China Railway International USA said: “The Project will develop, finance, build and operate the Southwest Rail Network, with stations in Las Vegas, Nevada, Victorville, California, and Palmdale, California, and service throughout Los Angeles.” Victorville is about 85 miles northeast of LA, and Palmdale is about 60 miles north.
The cost, benefits, and logistics of setting up speed demon trains in the sprawling US have sparked huge amounts of debate. Proponents of high-speed rail say it’ll create jobs and bring American infrastructure and technology up to speed (so to speak) with those nations that already have such systems. Opponents either don’t want construction in their area, or think it’s a waste of money, or think that high-speed rail doesn’t make sense in a big, spread out country like America. Meanwhile, supporters counter that high-speed rail is designed to link metros that are both large and close, like Boston to DC—not Missoula to Tampa.
Regardless, this agreement could bring at least one high-speed rail project closer to reality. Other advanced economies, like Japan, Germany, and France, have been running systems of their own for decades. Japan, for example, debuted its bullet trains way back in 1964.
In fact, China isn’t the only Asian country looking to bring its style of high-speed rail stateside. Earlier this year, we reported on two major high-speed rail plans already in motion in the US: A private venture in Texas that proposes linking Dallas and Houston–two of America’s fastest-growing urban centers–with a replica of Japan’s famed shinkansen, or bullet train. Meanwhile, California officially started rail construction on its own high-speed rail project in January, despite having not yet chosen a country’s trains to model its system on.
China, which overtook Japan as the world’s second largest economy in 2010, has been operating high-speed rail as well, and has even been running the world’s longest-running maglev train in Shanghai since 2004. Last year, China signed a $567 million deal to bring regular-speed trains to Boston, marking China’s first rail deal in America. We’ll have to wait and see how far the XpressWest project goes, and how Americans will respond to it.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lane’s Weighted Creep Theory

Image
Bligh, in his theory, had calculated the length of the creep, by simply adding the horizontal creep length and the vertical creep length, thereby making no distinction between the two creeps. However, Lane, on the basis of his analysis carried out on about 200 dams all over the world, stipulated that the horizontal creep is less effective in reducing uplift (or in causing loss of head) than the vertical creep. He, therefore, suggested a weightage factor of 1/3 for the horizontal creep, as against 1.0 for the vertical creep. Thus in Fig–1,  the total Lane’s creep length (L l ) is given by L l = (d 1 + d 1 ) + (1/3) L 1 + (d 2 + d 2 ) + (1/3) L 2 + (d 3 + d 3 ) = (1/3) (L 1 + L 2 ) + 2(d 1 + d 2 + d 3 ) = (1/3) b + 2(d 1 + d 2 + d 3 ) To ensure safety against piping, according to this theory, the creep length Ll must no be less than C1H L , where H L is the head causing flow, and C 1 is Lane’s creep coefficient given in table –2 Table – 2: V
Read more

What is Soil in Geotechnical Engineering.

Image
Definition of Soil The word ‘soil’ is derived from the Latin word solium which, according to Webster’s dictionary, means the upper layer of the earth that may be dug or plowed; specifically, the loose surface material of earth in which the plants grow. The above definition of soil is used in the field of agronomy (The application of soil and plant sciences to land management and crop production) where the main concern is in the use of soil for raising crops. In geology, earth’s crust is assumed to consist of unconsolidated sediments, called mantle or regolith, overlying rocks. The top soil contains a large quantity of organic matter and is not suitable as a construction material or as a foundation for structure. The top soil is removed from the earth’s surface before the construction of structure. The term ‘ soil ’ in the soil engineering is defined as an unconsolidated material , composed of solid particles , produced by the disintegration of rocks . The void space
Read more

What is Mill bent in Industrial Buildings?

Image
The assembly of roof truss attached to and supported on column at both the ends is known as bent, mill bent or transverse bent . An industrial buildings consists of a series of such transverse bent supporting the roof. The distance between the two adjacent transverse bents is known as bay . The space between the column lines is usually called an aisle.
Read more