Virgin Trains USA Providing Non-Stop Service From, Well, Victorville
Imagine sitting in a comfortable chair with plenty of personal space, a bottle of champagne in front of you (or a beer or in my case, a rum drink), relaxed and doing cheers with your friends and others around you while speeding to Las Vegas.
You’ve had no airport security hassles, no jammed gates, no searching for space in an overhead bin, no crammed middle seat because you have a Group C boarding pass. Or no sitting in traffic on a jammed I-15 saying, over and over again “will we ever get there!?”
I sure can and can’t wait to do it.
After all these years, the talks, the stalled politics, the lack of someone or some company stepping up to make it happen, a high-speed train from Los Angeles to the Las Vegas Strip is going to be a reality.
Finally.
Scheduled to start construction in 2020 and providing service by 2023 from Virgin Trains USA, it will go up to 150 miles and hour, take less than an hour and a half and roll right up to the Las Vegas Strip. You’ll be there perhaps before you finish your bottle of bubbly.
There is one major flaw, tho. The train does not actually go from Los Angeles. It starts and stops in Victorville. And that’s not exactly convenient to people in L.A.
Victorville is on the I-15 north of Fontana and the 10. To take the train, people will have to drive an hour and still go through the traffic-clogged El Cajon Pass. Knowing LA people, once they get in their cars they will stay in them until they reach their ultimate destination. I can just hear them saying “well we might as well just drive the whole way.”
Plus, on the way back to L.A., the driver won’t be able to have drinks and must be careful to avoid being too hung over from the previous night’s activity in Sin City.
So it’s not likely to put much of dent into the Southwest Airlines hourly flights to Vegas.
Still, once on the train – and you could take Amtrak from Union Station to Victorville, tho this is 2 1/2 hours – people will immediately recognize the advantages of taking it as opposed to flying or driving. From a flying standpoint, there’s no long security checkpoints, walking/running through airports to get to the gate, jammed space in planes, and because the train will stop at the Strip, no getting from the airport to the “action.”
The advantages over driving will be apparent the second you sit down with a drink and zoom pass cars sitting still on I-15. I experienced this “you suckers!” moment recently when I opted to take the train to Monterey as the train passed over cars that were stopped in traffic on the Ventura Freeway.
I’m all for more train travel in the USA. Especially to party destinations. No doubt this train will have a “bar car,” or at least a place to get drinks and a communal observation car. For many with the PubClub.com mentality, this will be like taking a party bus to Vegas. At 150 mph.
Bring it on; can’t wait!
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