Whether Southern Californians would be willing to drive to Victorville and catch a high-speed train to Las Vegas instead of slogging along car-choked Interstate 15 is a $3 billion bet a private group hopes to make soon.

That's the amount of money Las Vegas-based DesertXpress Enterprises seeks to build a 200-mile line along I-15 carrying 125-mph trains across the Mojave Desert about two-thirds of the way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

"It really is a new people pipeline for us," Tom Stone, DesertXpress president, said during a federally mandated public meeting on the project Tuesday.

The plan now faces the daunting task of finding investors, a dilemma that has kept similar grandiose projects from blooming, including the proposed $10 billion Las Vegas-to-Anaheim magnetic levitation "maglev" train stuck in early stages of development.

Stone, who was a consultant on the Las Vegas Monorail project and the "Gold Line" Los Angeles-to-Pasadena light rail line, said he won't ask taxpayers for help, with the exception of access to rights of way along I-15. "Our role as the private sector is to step up and provide DesertXpress at no cost for the taxpayers." Stone said. "We accept the risk of schedule, cost, reliability, funding and revenue."

The reason for using the small, isolated high desert town of Victorville, with a population of less than 70,000, as a jumping-off point is economic. Bridging the Cajon Pass and cutting through the dense Los Angeles metropolitan area would require costly engineering and right-of-way work, as opposed to the largely clear Mojave Desert leg west of the Cajon Pass.

"It (going to Los Angeles) drives up the cost dramatically, but it doesn't increase the ridership enough," Stone said. "We get close enough to the population base where Victorville actually works."

Stone's studies suggest that between 5 million and 10 million people live within a one-hour drive of Victorville, depending on traffic conditions. "You know Angelinos. They drive an hour to work and think nothing of it," he said.

Stone hopes to lure around 4 million round-trip passengers annually, many of whom now are driving I-15. That highway, designed to handle 38 million vehicles each year, is expected to be jammed with 52 million vehicles within a decade.

Plans call for a 10,000-car park-and-ride lot in Victorville, where vacation-bound drivers will be lured with perks.

"The Las Vegas experience will start in Victorville. Baggage handling. Hotel check-in. Valet parking," Stone said. "It'll be as if they've already arrived at the hotel."

Stone said he has received positive responses in informal discussions with various Las Vegas resorts about his plan.

A Las Vegas station site has not yet been selected, though it is expected to be on the south or central Strip or downtown.

For California-bound Las Vegans, a rental car station would be set up at the Victorville stop.

Fares will be set later, but Stone expects tickets to be about $110 round-trip. Trains would depart as often as every 20 minutes at peak travel times.

The system would use existing electric-diesel hybrid trains of a type now in use in England. The 10-car, 500-seat trains are built by Bombardier Inc., a Canadian firm that built the Las Vegas Monorail.

Stone hopes to have financing locked up sometime in mid-2007, with construction starting as soon as 2008 and the line opening as early as 2012. "We're discussing this project with a number of major investors from around the world," Stone said, declining to name those parties. "There's been great interest."

Stone said he sees his project as a substitute to the maglev lane, which he doubts can get the massive taxpayer and private funding it requires or operate at a profit. "We've been supporting the idea of a maglev project for many years," Stone said. "Now, it's clear to us it won't happen. It's not economically feasible."

Neil Cummings, president of the American Maglev Group -- a partner in the Nevada maglev plan -- doesn't think the DesertXpress plan offers the advantages of the maglev.

Maglev trains would operate at up to 300 mph by floating atop a magnetic cushion above an elevated track. Its planners anticipate up to 40 million annual riders paying $84 round-trip to Anaheim.

"If you put both systems side by side, people will ride the maglev," Cummings said. "You don't have to make a special point of making a 1 1/2-hour trip in your car to get to a train."

Cummings acknowledged that the two systems could end up fighting over investor interest and right-of-way access.

"In terms of competition for the right of way, I don't know if you can put two high-speed train systems in the I-15 corridor. Maybe you could," Cummings said.

The maglev plan has around $45 million in seed money in hand. Officials of that project hope to break ground in 2010, with completion by 2015 if full funding is found.