Private Equity Bets On a Train to Vegas

摘要

Virgin Trains USA has a big idea: Make train travel a hip, convenient alternative to driving in some of the most autocentric parts of the country. Backed by Fortress Investment Group private equity funds, the company last year launched along Florida's east coast the country's first new privately financed intercity passenger rail in a century. Its Miami hub is a gleaming, citrus-perfumed station where blue-blazered employees stock the VIP lounge with complimentary charcuterie.Now the company has Las Vegas in its sights. It says it can bring revelers there from the Los Angeles area by electric trains that can reach 150 mph. Wowed by the prospect of jobs and traffic relief, a California state agency in September approved the first step in Virgin Trains' plans to sell as much as $4.2 billion in tax-exempt debt for the $4.8 billionproject. The company says construction of the 170-mile line, mainly along the median of Interstate 15, will take three years, and it'll start in 2023.