The canceling of the Federal Loan to X-West is actually great news for HSR in the US. Here's why.
1) Finnacing of this project has been questionable and shaky at best. HSR's public image is already having to deal with all the negative press from CalHSRs trains to nowhere and billions spent without turning a single shovel.
2) If it did start construction, chances are very high it would run out of money and the project would stall. This would leave a wonderful photo op for are the naysayers in the median of I-15 to use forever as an arguement against future HSR.
3) If by a some miracle it did get completed and trains actually started running, almost no one with any real knowledge of the project (meaning those who know where Victorville actually is) believes that X-West will ever make any money or stand a chance of paying back the loan except for those working for X-West. No one honestly believes people are going to drive through hours of LA traffic and 100 miles out into the desert just to catch a train at a station that is already almost half way to Las Vegas. I suspect even the folks at X-West know this, which leads to my next point.
4) X-West could do damage to HSR equivalent to that done to Nuclear Power by the Three Mile Island accident. Namely, killing HSR forever. I believe that even the folks at X-West know their project is doomed to failure, however the plan now is to build it anyway and then either ask for a bailout or continuous subsidy. Or they intend to complete it, run it at a loss for a year or two and then threaten to shut it down and convince CA, NV or the federal government to purchase it and operate it as a government funded transit agency which they (X-West) would then ask for an operating concession. We would then have X-West pocketing the $5 billion federal loan, selling the route to the government (probaly another $5 billion or so), and then getting a multi-year operating concession (worth several hundred million a year) to operate a railroad that everyone knew was going to lose money from the start. Tell me I am wrong, but I think we all know how this kind of thing often works.
So again, the best thing for HSR is for bad projects to die before too many tax dollars are wasted. HSR cannot afford for the first new HSR project in this country to be a financial failure. Subsidy will be okay if the project has record ridership and efficient fiscally responsible operations. This combination will allow HSR to expand with bi-partisan support. That is why continued support for CalHSR and projects like X-West are so damming to the cause. Money should be spent on real projects and real improvements and not 20 year political sagas and pipedreams.
We take all the CalHSR money and put it into rebuilding the NEC, we could have a REAL 160+ mph corridor that actually serves large city centers across an entire region. We already know it would be a huge success since it already is a success now! And we could staret seeing the payoff immediately, not in 2025 or whenever CalHSR now says will be the first SF to LA train. OR, if we really think we need it to be a new project, then pick an existing corridor with proven ridership that is short enough to be up and running in 5 years or less and not based on political payoffs. Despite how much HSR folks hate Wisconsin, the reality is the Chicago to Milwaukee corridor (not Madison, Detroit or St. Louis) has been proven in study after study as the best choice for the first true HSR project. That's why both DB and SNCF are interested and willing to pay for much of it. But until we get people at the Federal DOT who base HSR on its viablity and not political payoffs or retaliation, the best we should hope for is nothing because in this case trying and failing truly would be worse than not trying at all.
