Bullet train would speed change in the IE
Up to 11M passengers are forecast annually at future Rancho Cucamonga Station
After reading about plans for a bullet train between Sin City and the 909, I quickly saw the benefits. “Finally,” I thought, “people in Las Vegas can travel to Rancho Cucamonga for a weekend getaway. And get a good night’s sleep.”
OK, maybe that’s not the most obvious reward. All the chatter is about people from Southern California making round trips to Las Vegas. In reality, the pattern should be more complicated.
“In California, we look at it that it’s easier for us to get to Vegas.
But California is the No. 1 destination for people from Nevada,” observed Matt Burris, Rancho Cucamonga’s deputy city manager.
People from Vegas could take the train here, then board Metrolink to get to L.A. or take an Uber to Disneyland, Burris told me. Or people could board in Apple Valley, and from Rancho could ride the ONT Connect shuttle 4 miles to Ontario International Airport for a flight.
How many might do this? No one knows yet. And we won’t really know until service starts.
That’s if it does, of course. But after 20 years of gab, plans for a fast train through the desert — on a route paralleling the 15 Freeway — are, shall we say, accelerating.
As you’ve no doubt heard, Brightline West, a private company, is proposing to build the all-electric rail line, promising to make the 218-mile journey in just over two hours at speeds up to 186 mph. Service could begin in 2027.
Two bursts of good news came recently, courtesy of the trainlovin’ Biden administration. First, Brightline was granted $3 billion from infrastructure funds Dec. 5. Then on Jan. 23, the U.S. Department of Transportation granted an additonal $2.5 billion in private activity bonds.
That’s almost half of the $12 billion cost, the rest of which would be raised by investors.
This all sounds good to me. My only regret is that there’s no footage of Joe Biden saying “Rancho Cucamonga.”
To get a firmer grasp on what might be a monumental project for Rancho Cucamonga and the Inland Empire, I met at City Hall with Burris and his boss, John Gillison, the city manager, to hear how Brightline West looks from their perspective.
Because Brightline West is an interstate transportation project, the state and federal governments are the entities approving the route and all necessary permits, Gillison explained. Rancho Cucamonga has
no say in the outcome.
I asked what concerns the city has.
“What impact is this going to have on us?
How big is it going to be? What is it going to do to Milliken and surrounding streets?” Gillison said.
Brightline would travel down the freeway median past the Victoria Gardens outdoor mall — “you’ll be able to see a train come in when you’re shopping or eating,” Gillison marveled — before moving to the freeway shoulder and then making a swooping turn at Eighth Street.
By the time it enters the city, the bullet train will be traveling 70 or 80 mph, Burris clarified. (He joked that if the train were navigating a turn at 186 mph, it would do so only once.)
The train would travel about 1 mile through the city on elevated tracks along Eighth Street to the Metrolink station at Milliken Avenue.
As Cucamonga Station, its new name, the station would do double duty, with Metrolink at surface level, as it is now, and Brightline on tracks overhead.
Renderings of the glass-walled station with trains on two levels look futuristic, like a space port on the Moon.
A massive parking structure would serve both lines. How massive? It would park “between 4,000 and 5,000” vehicles and might stand seven stories high — “eight floors with the roof,” Burris said.
The parking structure, Gillison said, would be of a size “like you’d see at Disneyland.” (Which has its own monorail, incidentally.)
From the structure, a pedestrian bridge would lead to the Brightline terminal, which would have a lounge and other airport-like amenities.
The city and the San Bernardino County Transportation Authority jointly own the station and have negotiated a sale to Brightline West. The price will become final after a property reappraisal and escrow should close by mid-2024.
Construction of the station and parking would start after a groundbreaking in 2025. The first work will begin this spring in Vegas. Only two stops are planned: Apple Valley and Hesperia. Tragically, no station is planned in Zzyzx.
Up to 11 million passengers are foreseen annually at Cucamonga Station. Compare that to 6.4 million last year at ONT.
“It’s kind of the equivalent of another small airport,” Gillison said.
It’s heady stuff, although it remains to be seen if it will pan out. City Hall’s optimism is growing.
“The funding was a big hurdle,” Gillison said, pegging the project’s likelihood now at 70-80%.
Hotels and restaurants are likely to spring up near the station, as well as housing, offices and stores. Epicenter Stadium is a few blocks away.
Brightline’s study estimated spending $300 million in Rancho to build the line, station and parking structure and creating 700 permanent jobs, Gillison said. Again, akin to an airport.
Now, I’m here to take Rancho Cucamonga seriously. It’s a nice place.
Yours truly even lived there for two years.
But I have to ask: If there’s a bullet train to Cucamonga, will there be stops in Anaheim and Azusa?
After all, in its prerancho days, Cucamonga’s claim to fame also involved trains. Namely, radio and television’s “The Jack Benny Program.”
Its occasional train station scenes had the running gag of a monotone announcement by Mel Blanc that went like this: “Train leaving on Track 5 for Anaheim … Azusa … and Cuuuuucamonga.”
Charmingly, when the Metrolink station was built in the 1990s, the stub streets off Rochester Avenue leading to Rancho Cucamonga Station were named Anaheim Place and Azusa Court.
If the station is sold to Brightline and rebuilt, I asked Gillison worriedly, would those whimsical street names go away?
“They’ll probably remain as is,” he assured me.
I can only hope that the bullet train arrives on Track 5.
David Allen, who has a one-track mind, writes Sunday, Wednesday and Friday. Email dallen@scng.com, phone 909-483-9339, like davidallencolumnist on Facebook and follow @davidallen909 on X, formerly Twitter.