Transportation planners once dreamed that super-fast trains would whisk Southern Californians at more than 300 mph across the Mojave Desert to Las Vegas.
But the idea of a magnetic levitation train didn’t stick around for long in regional transportation plans developed by the Southern California Association of Governments. Local planners instead are concentrating on connections within Southern California, so that when — and if — bullet trains ever come, conventional trains have a steady and direct route to get to them.
So 11 years after maglev made its debut in the regional transportation plan for Southern California, the agency overseeing the road and transit plan has deleted most of the Anaheim-to-Vegas route once proposed, saying maglev is not moving forward and is falling behind a competing project. As a result, the 2012 transportation plan under consideration by the Southern California Association of Governments does not include the $12.1 billion California-Nevada Super-Speed Train.
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