High-Speed Vegas Train

The privately financed high-speed train that will link Las Vegas and Southern California is alive and well, despite your article to the contrary (Dec. 12).

The facts are these: To be built with private resources, the Super Speed Train will keep to the long-planned schedule to draft an environmental impact report before finalizing route and stations. This will occur, as promised, before the states of California and Nevada approve final plans for the start of construction. All of this will be done by 1993, as scheduled.

The project’s developer, the Bechtel Corp., has assured the bistate commission overseeing the project that delays in German certification of the train are not critical to the project’s schedule; the train is planned to be installed in Florida on a 13-mile demonstration line by 1994, years before a similar system is to operate in our region. The Florida test will give everyone a chance to see that high-speed magnetic levitation will work.

Make no mistake, the bistate commission will ensure that the public is served by this important interstate system before approving construction or operation. And a high-speed train system is needed. We are in a new era of environmental awareness and a maglev system can dramatically reduce pollution from cars now making the trip across the desert.

The super-speed train also will create thousands of new jobs and commuting opportunities. Los Angeles and other counties are gearing up to spend billions of dollars in the coming decades on a vast rail system with 18 lines. The super-speed train will be built to take advantage of the travel opportunities and linkages among communities that will result from this re-railing of Southern California.

PAUL TAYLOR, Executive Director

California-Nevada Super Speed Train

Commission, Playa del Rey