From Bloomberg, June 5:
Next Stop: Rancho Cucamonga!
As Brightline advances its $12 billion plan to link Southern California and Las Vegas with bullet trains, this LA suburb sees a shot at urban reinvention.
Rancho Cucamonga, about 40 miles east of Los Angeles in California’s Inland Empire, was made by the automobile. After Interstate 15 opened here in the 1960s, this rural expanse of citrus orchards and vineyards transformed into a commuter town and logistics hub. Families flocked to the single-family homes that replaced farmland, while companies like Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling, flavor maker T. Hasegawa, Frito-Lay, and Amphastar Pharmaceuticals exploited its strategic location at the confluence of three major freeways and the Ontario International Airport.
Now this car-based city may be remade by the train. The private rail company Brightline has broken ground on a high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Southern California, making Rancho Cucamonga the western terminus of its $12 billion Brightline West project. In a full-circle moment, the city was chosen because of its location along the I-15 freeway, in the median of which the majority of the 218-mile track will run.
If all goes according to plan, the first trains will roll into town in 2028. The city believes it can leverage its new high-speed rail station — and the millions of riders that will potentially pass through it — to build the kind of transit-oriented urban core that towns in postwar Southern California have historically struggled to cultivate.
“There’s no precedent in the United States for this,” said Matt Burris, Rancho Cucamonga’s deputy city manager, of high-speed rail’s transformative potential.
California has another, more well-known high-speed rail project — a politically fraught effort to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles via a 520-mile route through the San Joaquin Valley. Construction has been underway for a decade, and the first section isn’t likely to open until 2030 at the earliest. That puts Rancho Cucamonga on track to become America’s first bullet-train hub, bringing a host of changes to this low-slung enclave of 175,000 residents located in the foothills of San Gabriel Mountains.
An unincorporated community until 1977, the city never developed a proper downtown, but the Brightline station could be the catalyst for one. “When it became clear to us that Brightline was coming, we came up with a specific plan for the whole area,” said John Gillison, Rancho Cucamonga’s city manager....
....Station to StationTens of millions of cars drive between LA and Las Vegas every year. Most pass by Rancho Cucamonga on their way — the car trip takes a little under 3.5 hours with no traffic. Brightline West’s train, which should be able to hit speeds of 200 miles per hour, will take just over two. A 2020 study estimated that 5 million car trips between LA and Las Vegas would convert to rail passengers, although more recently Brightline put that number at 3 million, with an additional 2 million passengers per year choosing the train instead of a flight....
....MUCH MORE
It's a really good idea to put high-speed rail where people want to go.
Previously on Brightline (East and West):
It's not as fast as the trains in France, and about the same speed as Japan's Tokyo - Osaka run, but it is quicker than California's.*
From ConstructionDive, June 22:
Brightline’s $5B Orlando high-speed rail extension complete
"Faster trains to begin carrying passengers as Amtrak’s monopoly falls"