With all due respects to Brightline West and its plan to build a high-speed train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, it will take a heck of a lot longer to travel between the two cities than the two hours that is being reported by the media.
Five is more like it.
Why? That is easy to explain.
The train will not actually depart from Los Angeles. Instead, it will leave from San Bernardino. For those not in the know, San Bernardino is not Los Angeles. Frankly, it’s not even close; it’s more than 60 miles from downtown L.A.
So how exactly does one get from Los Angeles to the station in San Bernardino? Drive I-10 in heavy traffic? That will another 1 1/2-two hours. And heck, once people get in their cars they are going to turn north I-15 and keep going to Vegas and not go to San Bernardino.
People could take another train, the Metrolink, but that’s two hours from downtown LA to downtown San Bernardino. So right there that two hours to Vegas is now four hours and that doesn’t even account for a layover between the trains and also the fact that Union Station is not exactly conveniently located in downtown LA; so that’s another 30 minutes to an hour, plus an expensive Uber ride to get there.
Now while I love the idea of taking a train instead of a plane. The seats have a lot more room and you can get up and walk around the train and don’t have to put up with a long security line and often-testy TSA agents.
Plus, Brightline will drop passengers off actually in Vegas, not on its outskirts where the airport is located. People could – and probably would – be having their first cocktails on the Strip right off the train’s platform rather than rushing to dump their bags in their hotel room and then going to the Strip. Personally, I am all in favor of it and I strongly believe that – eventually – a lot of people will use it.
But it’s important to do an apples-to-apples comparison between the two forms of transportation.
It takes at least three hours to fly to Vegas. The flight is only an hour but by the time you get to the airport, go through security, hit the bar if you are early to the gate (and hey, you’re flying to Vegas so that’s part of the drill), get to Sin City, get your bags and get to the hotel it’s three hours minimum. Toss any delays and it’s even longer.
Driving takes anywhere from 4 1/2 to six hours, depending on where one is leaving from in LA and of course traffic on I-15.
Now, if the LA-to-Vegas train were to leave from Union Station and take two hours, then a LOT of people would take it instead of driving or flying. But that is not the immediate reality.
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