Las Vegas Maglev Rail Plan Abandoned : Transportation: Increased costs, delays are blamed for the decision. Organizers say Southland projects could be hit by similar problems.

A plan to build a mile-long magnetic levitation rail line in downtown Las Vegas to demonstrate the utility of the new technology has been abandoned, the victim of unexpectedly high costs and bureaucratic delay.

The demise of what would have been the first maglev line in the Far West comes as uncertainties are being expressed about the feasibility of much larger proposed maglev projects, including a Las Vegas-to-Anaheim high-speed line and one between Los Angeles International Airport and Palmdale.

Although the Las Vegas plan was not linked to those, its organizers say they encountered many of the problems that could dog the larger efforts.

In a magnetic levitation system, trains riding on a slight cushion of air are propelled along a guideway by electromagnetic forces. Plans call for speeds exceeding 200 m.p.h. on high-speed lines, but the maximum speed on the short Las Vegas line would have been about 45 m.p.h.

In a telephone interview this week from his offices in Pittsburgh, John Kapala, president of Magnetic Transit of America, a subsidiary of AEG-Westinghouse International, said the decision to break off construction in Las Vegas, leaving a few barren columns and a single nearly completed station, was made by German entrepreneurs who recently bought into AEG.

“We have been working on this program for five years,” Kapala said. “There were a lot of delays that increased the costs of the program. It took a long time to get the approval of the Nevada Public Service Commission. We also had trouble with rights of way and local approvals. . . . It just got to the point where it was no longer economically viable to proceed.”

Kapala said the cost originally was projected at $56 million. He would not say what the projected cost was at the end, but knowledgeable sources in Las Vegas said it was more than $100 million.

Just as with the proposed maglev projects in California, the Las Vegas train was supposed to be funded entirely through the private sector, with the government contributing only rights of way.

Recently, some private promoters have said that because of the tight economy, now is not the best time to solicit investments for largely untried new technologies.

But promoters say fast government approvals are needed to keep costs from soaring because of inflation.

Only two weeks ago, at a meeting of the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, which is charged with the Las Vegas-Anaheim high-speed train, an official of the Bechtel Corp., the franchisee designated to build that project, warned that expedited legislative and other approvals are needed if that line is to secure investors.

Before Bechtel could go ahead, approval of the California and Nevada legislatures would be necessary. The company has been given about a year to study the feasibility of the Las Vegas-Anaheim line.

Kapala said that Las Vegas city authorities were as helpful as possible to the would-be builders of the one-mile line, but county officials and the business community on the Las Vegas Strip were less helpful. A proposed eventual extension of the downtown line down the middle of the strip did not win support.

“I don’t think the area itself, Las Vegas, the county, the businessmen, are in unison on how to proceed with traffic projects, and until they are, I don’t think anyone will be successful,” said Kapala.

A Japanese-owned firm, the HSST-Nevada Corp., has proposed a larger local maglev project serving the strip and the McCarran Airport.

Most city officials declined comment on the downtown line. Tom Graham, the city’s director of design and development, said only, “The company had rights to terminate, if it was determined it wasn’t feasible, and they so determined.”