Brightline West

The Brightline train, the Brightline train in Florida in bankruptcy.

It's a different company, but the same people with Brightline West.

They have been working on this for decades.

The biggest problem to me is that they have now come in with billions, not billion, but billions more needed in funding.

Becky, I'm going to let you rebut that, but I also want to say the Brightline in Florida is in bankruptcy.

Brightline West is not in bankruptcy, although they're looking for billions of additional

dollars.

Thank you for clarifying that.

In this more progressive region, the company was able to find deeper public support and, in addition to billions of already approved PAB financing, the company was also awarded billions worth of state and federal grants, perhaps spurred on by the upcoming 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles and the company's bafflingly realistic promise to complete the project by then.

So Brightline West has become the second private passenger rail project in America in the 21st century to tilt into likelier than not to happen.

So much so that the Biden administration is already taking credit for their role in it.

Yet the reason why Brightline's audacious claims of building a passenger rail service in four years or even building its Florida service in the first place were believable is because they're focusing on the absolute lowest hanging fruit.

And the other option is something that folks outside of the U.S. would be a little more familiar with, which is the open access operator model.

Yeah, so to start off, we'll take a look at the private operator model, which is similar to what Brightline West and Brightline, what we've seen in Florida are using.

And that involves some very expensive upfront costs.

As you can imagine, you need to physically acquire or come to some sort of agreement on using the different right of ways.

Hopefully get them on a little more solid footing.

Not sure what impact that'll have on their Brightline West project.

The Fresno Bee reports California high-speed rail is also facing a cash crisis, and they're asking, uh, the state lawmakers up in Sacramento access to billions of dollars that they'd already committed to help pay into the project.

And riders of the commuter rail, they're in effect at South Station in Boston.

It has now entered into a restructuring support agreement, according to multiple outlets.

Brightline West, the company actually building the rail line, remains a separate entity and says it still plans to move forward with the project that will connect Las Vegas to Southern California.

Both companies are owned by Fortress Investment Group.

Schools across the state are observing Nevada Week of Respect this week.

Hmm

... now Brightline West, which is a related but separate company, is kinda wrapping their heads around this.

But the bankruptcy filing doesn't directly impact them, again, being a separate company.

But my question to you, Vogue and Jacob, is if the high-speed rail project in Florida has been this bad, this much of a mess, how do we feel about the chances of it ever actually working out here in the west from SoCal to Vegas?