The planned Brightline high-speed rail line to connect Southern California to Las Vegas been awarded $200 million of private activity bonds from the Nevada State Board of Finance. This support for the XpressWest rail project comes after a California committee, overseen by California Treasurer Fiona Ma, awarded the project $600 million of private activity bonds in April.
To raise additional funds for the transportation project, both state allocations allow the company to sell up to four times the value of the awards as tax-exempt bonds to private investors. This means that the project has the ability to raise an additional $800 million from the Nevada award and as much as $2.4 billion from the California award.
This story was originally reported by Forbes.
The project is planned to commence construction by the end of this year. It will be built along an existing government-owned right-of-way through the desert along Interstate 15. The first phase of the route will connect the 170 miles between Las Vegas and Southern California’s Victor Valley; expansion to Los Angeles will follow in a separate phase.
Brightline currently operates the nation’s only privately-owned express passenger rail line, connecting Florida’s West Palm Beach to Miami. Company spokesman Ben Porritt says the Las Vegas to Los Angeles project will take about three years to complete and “will create a total of 30,000 construction jobs and 1,000 permanent jobs in the neighboring states once the line is up and running.”
