A Billionaire’s Blueprint For Building Bullet Trains

I'm in Las Vegas this morning on a sunny hot day we're here to Mark the start of construction of bright Line West this is expected to be the first High-Speed Rail Project that's operational in the United States the goal by its developer Wes Edens a billionaire who owns the Milwaukee Bucks and the astonvilla football club in the UK is to have this thing built in four years for a total cost of $12 billion and the expect is that it's going to be operational in time for the Summer Olympics in LA in 2028 this project if it moves as fast as expected and stays on budget and on time would be the first true bullet train in the United States running at speeds of up to 200 M an hour or more and do that within about 4 years West Edens the guy behind this is a private Equity billionaire he's a part owner of the Milwaukee Bucks NBA franchise he also owns the astonvilla football club in the UK and other European soccer teams Wes has been fixated on doing this project for years previously bright line opened its first private Railway in Florida a few years ago and last year added a new extension connecting that project from Orlando all the way down to Miami to learn a little bit more Forbes had an exclusive opportunity to sit down with Wes Edens who was the chairman of right line as well as us Transportation secretary Pete Budaj to understand what this project means both for Wes and his company but also more broadly High-Speed Rail in this [Music] country finally a ground breaking for bright Line West and you expect this to be the first high-speed rail system in the United States when it opens do you really think you can get this 218 mile system between Las Vegas and Southern California built with a fouryear timetable 100% we it's not just a a wild speculation on our part that's the product of a tremendous amount of work and time and money that's been put into it already we kind of broke the system up into segments so we're not really starting at one place to get to the other so you'll see simultaneous activity along the corridor for this you know the Rolling Stock you know is something we were actually out you know putting out for the bids right now so it's something that we want to get you know off the drawing boards and into uh into production soon so all those things together we really do believe that the timeline is both an aggressive one but a very achievable one and we think four years from now we'll have a train where we're standing right and you're confident it'll be operational in time for the LA Summer Olympics in 2028 we are there's the things we control and the things we don't control so we we think that we can control the construction part of it at the end of it there's in a very lengthy process of then making sure that it qualifies for all the the FR and you know government guidelines for this and there hasn't been a spot high-s speeed train to test again so that's that's a little bit of ambiguity but we do feel like that was the target all along we feel like you know having U you know president Biden R uh during before the end of his second term is a big part of a it's always good to have a goal and that's that's a goal that we have and we're excited about it Mr secretary this project is happening with a lot of federal support a $3 billion Grant 3.5 billion in private activity bonds is this the model or in this case are you trying to just like get things going and and fund help fund this particular project and hoping that that Stokes up interest well we do believe that when this project is complete it's going to open the floodgates for American expectations around High-Speed Rail it won't anymore be I just got back from Japan why can't we have that it'll be I just got back from Vegas why can't we have that in the midwest or in the northwest or wherever I live as a as a domestic tourist in the United States this is important because it really establishes that it can be done here which by the way of course it can be done here this is the United States of America but in the past we haven't invested enough to make this happen I'll tell you the the federal funding coming into this project came from a very compe process so it was not done lightly they had to H all sorts of marks in order to qualify both for the3 billion in Grants and the three half billion dollars in in financing that's coming to support this project but we wouldn't be here if we didn't believe in it and you know Human Experience and American experience has demonstrated that projects of this L level of ambition are difficult they're doable and they're hugely impactful and they actually get achieved this is not the first groundbreaking for a highspeed Rail Project next door and California one's been underway for a while but the timeline is a lot longer the costs are a lot greater there's a big chunk of the budget that no one knows exactly where that's going to come from should California consider working with a bright Line West or another private entity to maybe help that project get built all the way from LA to San Francisco well the structure the the scale and the the distance of the California project make it quite different from this one but what I will say is the more you do it the more you do it and words the more we have functioning highspeed rail up and running in the United States the more we have a nationwide Readiness for it both in terms of customers passengers and in terms of the professionals who work on it who uh when they encounter a problem they're not encountering it for the first time I think that's already served right line well because of their experience not what we consider highp speed in these terms but but real experience delivering an important train service in Florida and I think in turn that the California project and this and every other highspeed rail Vision in America can all benefit from each other because we build that muscle memory as a country on how to do this and that industry as a country that domestic High-Speed Rail industry that I think could take its place alongside the Auto industry and the aviation industry as a huge employer and Driver of value with the United States Wes you've been thinking about this a long time and as mentioned you're already operating the Florida system you're now starting with this one but you've mentioned there are other inner city routes that look very compelling is there another one that looks as doable because obviously in this casee the a lot of the regulatory approval was done a lot of the environmental approval was done the land was acquired so this one seems to have many things working in its favor are there others that both look attractive but also have some of the same elements going for it yeah I think there are actually many others and I think that probably the uh the major development between version 1.0 in Florida and version 2.0 here in Vegas La is moving off of an existing rail system into the an already Disturbed uh transportation Corridor which is i5 and so there's lots of highways that connect these City pairs that are attractive so the too far to drive too short to fly with two big population centers that's that's the secret sauce of this putting it in the middle of the highway I think actually makes it solves a lot of issues you can basically you know you can create your own system you can put a fence around it there's no rail crossings you can go at true high speeds 200 miles you know plus an hour so there's a lot of those so we look around the country there's very obvious ones the whole kind of Texas triangle of you know Dallas to Houston Houston to San Antonio Austin there that's one that obviously makes sense in terms of the economic profile of it Portland to Seattle and that whole you know that whole area of the world the Midwest even like you look at places from you know Cleveland to Columbus and whatnot so I I think that there are many many expressions of it you need to drisk it by getting one done what the secretary said I really believe in he like it can't be a second Till There was a first but once you have a p&l you can look at it you can see that the revenue projections are correct you can see that the ridership is correct that's what it really catalyzes and I think there's a number of places it'll go and I think this first one is it's not just the development of this the system that's important it's the development of the entire industry that's the really exciting that's the milestone for me that I think will be really notable when we look back on this in years to come and what's your ridership target for SoCal to Vegas once things are sort of like annualized after a year or two of operation there's about 50 million trips that happen between Las Vegas and Los Angeles about 85% of those happen by car right when you look at the amount of time you save people that's a big indicator for how many people are going to ride your train so simply put the more time you say save them the more you're going to do it there's few places you're going to save people more time than between here and LA right that ride is at best a long ride and at worst it's a lot worse than that so we think that a pretty good percentage of the you know 40 plus million that are on that will get onto our train I think our initial estimates are around 12 million is kind of a stabilized number but I really believe longterm we'll have a capacity problem more than a ridership problem because I think that you know this is just such a compelling opportunity for people versus driving across the desert that I think it'll be it'll be really really amazing and over time do you see an opportunity to connect from Rand show into actual Los Angeles property well we are connected on the Metro System right so basically you can walk across the tracks and get under the Metro Link system that's a very active very very productive system in Southern California would love to see that get electrified would love to asire one day to get down there but that's that's not you know part of the plans right now and I say I'd like to get electrified because I'd like to see fewer emissions kind of everywhere and so I think that that would be an obvious an obvious choice for it but when you look at the the the system itself I15 kind of comes down the pass and it and it it goes into the LA basin everything like goes from there so putting a a train station right there is a really a sensible thing right that's what 100% of the people that drive to Las Vegas have to drive past our train station right so that's a very very good place to start so the the train station itself is not a second choice at all we think that obviously Union Station is an iconic place and that'd be a lot of great things but there's you know that that's not that's not really the destination we view is as important as the Rancho station Mr secretary what looks like the most promising next project after this one we know our Corridor identification for program is funding several early planning efforts around the country uh the Texas Central Railroad that would go Dallas to Houston the Cascadia Vision that would connect Vancouver Seattle and Portland Charlotte to Atlanta which given the amount of economic growth happening there and just the population layout of that part of the South also incredibly compelling and there's more where that came from look we know it's going to take Federal support to get some of these projects onto the drawing board let alone turn them into a reality but that's exactly why we need to be working now toward that longer range future and to those who say you know well this isn't Europe that's true it isn't Europe we're doing this on American terms what we definitely have in America are these kinds of geographic layouts where you got lots of City pairs that are uh an uncomfortably long drive uh or an inefficiently short flight apart from each other those are excellent candidates for highspeed Rail and which which of those pairs is your next choice which do you think looks most don't know we're so focused on this right now we haven't picked you know kind of the next one I'll say this we've been contacted by a lot of different Governors and whatnot that are curious about this I think today is a real Milestone to see that this is a reality that's now happening and I think that there could easily be like I say a handful of these things that turn into real projects from our standpoint in the next you know 12 to 24 months so it's an exciting time for it so the uh of the funding for this project 5.5 billion from private sources are you one of those private sources or you putting in your own I am one of those private sources I've actually put my money where my mouth is so you know I've done I've been invested in this project for a very long time and you know obviously we think it's going to be a compelling investment I think that in my own life I've tried to find things that I could focus on where you're doing well by doing good and something it really makes an impact and I think that the impact from this is going to be long long lasting and it's going to be you know prodigious and so I'm just really excited to be a part of it and I wanted to be successful because I want the next one and the next one the next one to happen

Channel: Forbes

Views: 113,078

Keywords: Forbes, Forbes Media, Forbes Magazine, Forbes Digital, Business, Finance, Entrepreneurship, Technology, Investing, Personal Finance, wes edens, billionaire, billionaires, bullet train, high speed train, usa, las vegas, los angeles, train, rail, pete Buttigieg, transportation

Id: zOoekV6Cy8Q

Length: 11min 28sec (688 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 24 2024