A federal lawsuit has thrown an element of uncertainty into a project that was billed as the country’s first true high-speed rail project.
Alstom, which makes train sets for the Amtrak Acela service on the East Coast, argued in court that it should have gotten the contract to build equipment for Brightline West, a privately operated line that aims to connect Las Vegas and Southern California. Brightline and the winning vendor dispute the claim.
The Brightline project is being built with a $3 billion federal grant, and Alstom sued the Federal Railroad Administration in July saying it improperly waived “buy America rules” associated with the grant.
Alstom’s parent company is based in France but built a plant in the U.S. to manufacture the Amtrak trains. The other bidder was the German conglomerate Siemens.
