Who to blame for the X Train failure?

You've probably seen the various news reports by now that the Las Vegas Railway Express, also known as the X Train, has pretty much failed in its plans to get its "party trains" going between Southern California and Las Vegas.

Early on I was a supporter of the project (I still am) and I did some work for the company. The X Train was going to be conventional rail travel -- and not a high speed train service -- which made it realistic as no special trains or tracks would have to be built. There are various high speed projects in the works or under consideration and they would cost billions of dollars. The X Train would never need that kind of money.

It's too bad that there was no government support for conventional passenger travel between SoCal and Vegas. Ironically, there is government support for high speed rail service in the West, but not conventional rail service. There is a government sponsored plan for high speed rail between northern and southern California, and there was government support for a high speed rail line between Victorville, California and Las Vegas. But there was no government support for a return of conventional train service between Southern California and Las Vegas. Why?

Why would government leaders in California and Nevada support building high speed rail service costing billions of dollars, when conventional train service which would cost only a fraction of the price of high speed doesn't get support? Can't government support a low cost option? Or, to put it another way, can government only support big, costly projects?

I think California Governor Brown and Nevada Senator Reid owe the voters in their states an explanation: why can they support multi-billion dollar projects for high speed rail systems that are really a decade or longer away, but they haven't supported a conventional rail system that literally could be operating in a matter of a few months and without the use of taxpayer dollars?

This is an important thing to remember: The X Train never sought taxpayer dollars. What it needed was a little support to allow it to use existing, conventional rail tracks between SoCal and Vegas. It struggled to get that permission to share the tracks and it couldn't get the permission. Why didn't government leaders get involved? Was it because the dollar amount was too small? Or, was it because an alternative to I-15 gridlock was too simple?

I don't blame the executives of the LVRE for this failure. I blame our government leaders for not getting on board a simple, good idea that didn't cost much money -- and didn't require any taxpayer money.

Someone in Washington or in Sacramento should have picked up the phone and called a few people to say "let's make this happen." Instead, these same government leaders will someday in the future propose some kind of alternative for travel that is likely going to pound taxpayers for billions of dollars.

I haven't even mentioned Amtrak, but I will now. Why didn't Amtrak embrace this idea and do everything it could to help push it through. Amtrak was approached many times.

Sometimes the best ideas, the lowest cost ideas, and the simplest ideas get overlooked or dismissed because they are the lowest cost, and the simplest and the best. And that makes it look like government leaders can only support big solutions with big payrolls and big spending and big contracts to hand out to friends.