This Upcoming Bullet Train Promises Lightning Fast Trips Between Los Angeles & Las Vegas

Suppose you want to get from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. By car, this will take about four hours. Mostly you'll stick to Route 15, cruising through flat desert with only scattered development in between. You could also fly; this can be as inexpensive as $25 one-way, but requires getting to LAX, passing through security, and risking delayed flights — then finding ground transport from Harry Reid International Airport to wherever you're staying in Vegas. Including the 90-minute flight, this process might not be much faster than driving. You could also take Greyhound, but times are variable (up to seven hours), and a ticket could easily cost more than a budget flight.

But almost anything is better than taking Amtrak between these two cities. At the moment, the full route takes at least 12 hours, and one coach ticket can cost more than four times as much as a typical Spirit flight. And although you're booking through Amtrak, the largest passenger rail network in the U.S., this journey includes "mixed service," which means you'll not only transfer in Oxnard, California, but you'll ride the second leg on a bus. By the time you step aboard this cumbersome vehicle and pull onto the dusty highway, you may start wishing you'd hitchhiked instead.

All that's about to change, thanks to the construction of a new high-speed train between the two popular cities. The new line, called Brightline West, will connect downtown Los Angeles to Rancho Cucamonga — a suburb northeast of L.A. — and then continue straight to Sin City. Total time: two hours and 10 minutes. The same way this long-awaited Amtrak train now offers high-speed rides on the east coast, this west coast bullet train should reach speeds of 218 miles per hour.

Railroad fans will have to wait until at least 2028, when the new line is scheduled to start operations, and it would be shocking if the project didn't face one delay or another. Yet Brightline West is more than just talk: The plan has been approved and entered a serious construction phase in 2025.

The line is a private initiative, and has nothing to do with Amtrak. Investors are promising 35,000 construction jobs, 800 permanent jobs, and $10 billion in economic impact. As for riders, a one-way ticket is expected to cost $118, which many passengers will happily pay to avoid hours of cruise control through the desert.

Brightline West comes at an exciting time for rail travel in the U.S. While the national passenger railroad company may be separate, Amtrak could finally restore long-lost western routes, linking cities like Boise and Salt Lake City, and other states in America are eagerly waiting to be connected by Amtrak's expanding train service. After decades of letting passenger rail limp along with minimal funding and lackluster ridership, major U.S. cities may finally get a fast, easy, affordable intercity transit service. It's hard to say exactly how rail will evolve, but at least tracks are being laid.