A Private Equity Firm Wants to Build a Train to Las Vegas

Virgin Trains USA has a big idea: Make train travel a hip, convenient alternative to driving in some of the most autocentric parts of the country. Backed by Fortress Investment Group private equity funds, the company last year launched the country’s first new privately financed intercity passenger rail in a century along Florida’s east coast. Its Miami hub is a gleaming, citrus-perfumed station where blue-blazered employees stock the VIP lounge with complimentary charcuterie.

Now the company has Las Vegas in its sights. It says it can bring revelers there from the Los Angeles area by electric trains that can reach 150 mph. Wowed by the prospect of jobs and traffic relief, a California state agency in September approved the first step in Virgin Trains’ plans to sell as much as $4.2 billion in tax-exempt debt for the $4.8 billion project. The company says construction of the 170-mile line, mainly along the median of Interstate 15, will take three years, and it’ll start in 2023. That would make speedy rail a reality in California, where a voter-approved bullet train between San Francisco and Los Angeles has been beset with delays and cost overruns over the past decade.