Personally, I've never been a huge fan of Texas, but I'm rooting for them to get this Texas Central railroad project going

"El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First!" (lightningzone) 04/20/2020 at 08:54 • Filed to: None

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Tains are awesome. High speed trains are really awesome.

DutchieDC2R > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:18

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If its anything like the oil and gas industry in Texas, I’m sure it’ll work out just fine.

(just trying to get the most out of my newfound knowledge on the oil and gas industry in Texas here, don't mind me)

SiennaMan > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:18

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21st century transportation technology for the cities vs rural ranchers who’d apparently prefer to be left alone.

Reading about their legal issues with surveying and right of way got me to think of how maybe the high speed tunnel people have a point.  The engineering is much more challenging,  but the politics are far easier.  That said, is my research correct that this venture has gotten to survey and buildout basically without public money?

ttyymmnn > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:20

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That’s a great idea. I’d love to see it happen. Trouble is, once you get to Dallas or Houston, those cities are so damned big and spread out that you’d then have to transfer to shitty local public transportation. A train between San Antonio and Dallas also makes sense. But the same problem arises at your destination. You’d also have to have huge parking lots at the termini. 

DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:20

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I don’t want to be defeatist but they’ve been talking about this for a long long time and nothing has ever come of it. There are a lot of issues with getting property, NIMBY types fighting eminent domain.

Not only that, some are already using the pandemic to try to get the project cancelled.

Texas has some pretty anti public transit tendencies. Take Houston for example. Houston is the 4th largest city in the USA, however, there is an average daily ridership of public transit options of ~280k on weekdays. And to be honest, the public transit that is available is slow, limited, and confusing. Anyone who has a car would prefer to drive.

This is exacerbated by the fact that the Houston metro area is massive suburban sprawl, as is the Dallas-Fort worth area. Now that you’ve arrived, how do you get where you need to go?

The central railway sounds like a good idea until you realize that there’s a dearth of public transit options at your destination, so then why not just make the drive instead and then you have a vehicle to take you to your final destination.

For such a project to be successful there needs to be a major culture shift in how we get around.

HoustonRunner > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:21

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I really like the idea as well. What is hard to figure out though is how much it will actually take care off the road, which I guess will be very dependent on the price. I didn’t watch all the videos, but I assume somewhere they address the challenge of getting to Dallas (or Houston) and then still needing a car to get around. Same challenge as air travel, but replacing air travel with trains doesn’t take cars off the road.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > SiennaMan 04/20/2020 at 09:24

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Yeah. Fully private. They probably got inspired by Luca di Montezemolo’s(yes former Ferrari boss) Italo project.

I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker > SiennaMan 04/20/2020 at 09:29

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Interstates and State Routes already cut through the country. Why not just run the train alongside the interstate? If memory serves correctly, there should be a ~15 foot highway easement on either side.

Ash78, voting early and often > DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back 04/20/2020 at 09:34

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The “last mile” issue plagues just about all newer cities, especially in the Southeast where growth has been basically unabated for decades with no real infrastructure plan.

Not saying growth is bad, just that we were all enabled by the car — and now we want to backfill with public transit, despite the uphill logistical battle .

And that’s before you even start talking about NIMBY or personal vehicle preferences or any of that. Places like DFW, HOU, ATL...they all basically resemble LA, which is notorious for traffic. No surprise. At least LA has the Pacific Ocean to contain it from one side!

SiennaMan > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:35

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Very cool. Well, I’m unlikely to ever ride on it if it does make it, but I’ll roo t for it. As a fully grade separated high speed train it’ll make a heck of a lot of sense as an alternative to flying, especially on a corridor that I’m sure sees a lot of travel between the two urban centers.

As an aside, a part of me also likes the potential irony  of a first one of these being in Texas as opposed to the northeast. I’m sure most Americans have preconceived notions of Texas, and I doubt state of the art high speed rail is in many of those notions..

kanadanmajava1 > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:35

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I have a great idea . This might be an idea that people in Texas would really like. The y really like pickups there? So the train could be made of several railway cars that are shaped like pickups. So half of the railway car would be a passenger space and the rest would be a big open cargo bed. You could haul some stuff on the bed.   The passenger capacity might get halved but I don’t think that t his matters. You could instead have double amount of the rail way cars.

Like this but a lot bigger and with proper railway wheel s.

haveacarortwoorthree2 > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:38

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I moved to Texas in 93 and this was a subject of discussion back then. When I die (hopefully later rather than sooner), it still will be a subject of discussion. It’s just not going to happen. 

ttyymmnn > HoustonRunner 04/20/2020 at 09:41

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If I want to visit the Dallas Zoo with my family, I’m not buying 5 seats on SWA. I’m going to drive. But the problem of getting to the zoo after getting off the train still remains. The idea of taking a train from Austin to Dallas, or a line from SA to Dallas is fantastic. But there needs to be good public transportation on the ends. 

ttyymmnn > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 09:42

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The big cities in TX have pretty much stopped building public roads, opting instead for toll roads whose construction is funded by private, often foreign, companies. So, we pay highway taxes, and then get toll roads. Somebody is winning, but it’s not the driving public. 

haveacarortwoorthree2 > Ash78, voting early and often 04/20/2020 at 09:46

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Exactly. DFW has 4-5 sizable business centers. You have the two downtown (and nearby) areas. Then you have Las Colinas (home of 4 or 5 Fortune 500 companies, plus a bunch of others). You have Frisco (home of Toyota NAm now, plus the Cowboys and others ). You have Plano. Y ou might even add in the Alliance Airport area. And of course there are numerous other smaller business areas based around a sizable company (TI and AA , for two examples ). 

DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back > Ash78, voting early and often 04/20/2020 at 09:46

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I would say growth in the manner it currently exists is bad. It causes serious QOL issues later down the line. I’ll bring up Houston again because thats what I’m familiar with, but there is really nothing to stop the sprawl. From Galveston to The Woodlands (80 miles) and Baytown to B rookshire (60 miles) is all suburban sprawl. And it continues to grow. Existing suburban areas reach max capacity... and then some, so people move out further...rinse and repeat.

Or, as we discovered during Harvey, developers build houses where they never should have been built, are dishonest about their tendency to flood, and then thousands are people are displaced because their house is in a reservoir.

SiennaMan > HoustonRunner 04/20/2020 at 09:47

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I agree. I’m not convinced it would take cars off the road necessarily, though I could easily see it taking a few commuter flights out of the skies. It’s an interesting time with something like this. As of February 2020 I’m sure there were a lot of people going between the downtowns of the two urban centers. Will those same people get comfortable with webex and zoom and google hangouts and limit in person meetings in the future?

I guess my other question, based on other comments is, if you’re traveling for business would taking a fast train and renting a car for the day really be that objectionable an alternative to driving your personal car or renting at home and driving? If it’s a long day of outside sales visit, are there that few use cases where the time would be worth the extra cost?

I agree these are open questions,  but I wouldn't count out a group that has gotten as far as they have apparently gotten on only private funds..

3point8isgreat > kanadanmajava1 04/20/2020 at 09:53

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Or, maybe your picture is the perfect solution! Attach a bunch of those together to form an actual train. And then pull them along with a train engine. . Then when you get to your destination you still have your Texas required large truck to drive around so you’re not stranded without a car.

Ash78, voting early and often > haveacarortwoorthree2 04/20/2020 at 09:55

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I would say I’m still a fan of having more than one “downtown” because it decentralizes commutes...until you leave your job in one place and take a new job in another! Then you’re right back to a traditional downtown commute, but even worse because you might have multiple traffic choke points along the way.

The crazy thing about city planning is we really only base it on what has worked before (and large inland cities didn’t start out as seaports like most of the Northeast, or even West Coast) . I’m hopeful that more WFH options will take off, at least reducing traffic across the board. Only then will we really know what our traffic NEEDS are, not just our status quo today.

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often 04/20/2020 at 09:57

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The problem is that in Dallas or Houston, the “last mile” is more like the “last 10 or 15 miles.” That said, the idea of taking high speed rail to Dallas to catch a flight is pretty appealing. I may not save any money by avoiding the connection, but I’ll save a lot of time. 

Ash78, voting early and often > ttyymmnn 04/20/2020 at 10:06

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Rail between airports or business districts still sounds great to me — I was just going off of the tangent about mass transit within the large metro areas.

We’re still at a point where every time we take a car trip, I ask myself if we could do it with mass transit (kids, luggage, gear, food, general sanitation) and the answer is always “no.” My point there is that mass rail adoption — beyond certain urban commuters — still has a lot of hurdles to overcome, including a fundamental change in how we even pack our stuff . Replacing an airline trip might be doable, but replacing the car for the Great American Roadtrip™ would be nearly impossible.

Ash78, voting early and often > DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back 04/20/2020 at 10:10

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Even beyond QOL, I’ve been reading for years about the Texas Experiment (my term), that despite massive economic growth and low taxes, there will come a point where the infrastructure will be too expensive to maintain properly. That may still be 20-30 years away, but it’s a good proxy for a lot of the US — low population density, but almost all of us have paved roads and sewers and water systems serving everyone at a consistently high level. That’s not cheap...

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often 04/20/2020 at 10:17

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Austin built the world’s most half-assed light rail system a few years ago. They used a single line of existing track, so trains going in opposite directions have to be timed so they can pass at stations. Which means that the trains run at 30 minute or 60 minute intervals. With such small capacity, the southbound trains running into downtown are full by the time they get to their second stop. And, the train does not go to the airport. You’d be hard pressed to find a state that is more hostile to light rail than TX, and even in a blue city like Austin it’s a very hard sell.

Ash78, voting early and often > ttyymmnn 04/20/2020 at 10:34

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Birmingham has zero passenger rail, which is a tiny bit ironic for a city built on rail. Politically, we have 20+ adjacent municipalities that never work together on much, and only ~ 1/5 of the MSA’s population is in the actual city, so power is decentralized. Plus we have topography issues that really prevent easy connection to most of the suburbs. The city knows all of this and just finished a 2-year downtown highway project with all the high-flying viaducts and Jetsons-type stuff. Our downtown highways were about 30 years old and wholly unprepared for the speeds and volumes of the modern era.

OTOH, I wonder what city growth will look like in the coming generation with increasing levels of knowledge workers and remote capabilities (at least part time).

DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back > ttyymmnn 04/20/2020 at 10:34

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As much as I complain about how useless public transit is in Houston, I’m surprised Austin is that much worse.

Our light rail actually has two way tracks and goes to useful places. However that’s basically just the stadium, the medical center, museum district, downtown, the soccer stadium, and U of H with a few stops in between. The problem is that there really isn’t an express option and the light rail takes about 30 -45 mins to get from the stadium to downtown which would maybe take 20 mins in a car depending on traffic.   

ttyymmnn > Ash78, voting early and often 04/20/2020 at 10:42

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The coronavirus has the potential to make profound changes to the way we work. It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. 

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > ttyymmnn 04/20/2020 at 10:43

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Well, I'm assuming some of those companies sent a few green bricks towards your governor and congressman. Then the cogs started moving like they were lubed up with Texas oil.

ttyymmnn > DAWRX - The Herb Strikes Back 04/20/2020 at 10:45

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We live in north Austin, and there is a train station about 1.5 mi from my house. My wife works at UT, but if she took the train it would drop her about 3 mi from the university and she’d have to connect to a bus to get her .25 mi from her office. Fortunately, there is an express bus that picks up at the same place and drops her at the door to her office. It doesn’t save her any time on the commute, but she doesn’t have to drive and she can use the wifi on the bus. 

ttyymmnn > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 10:47

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One of the toll roads runs near my house. They build a massive toll plaza with about 20 gates. They also put three lanes in each direction that bypasses the toll booths for those using a toll tag. Within about two years of the completion of the toll road, they closed all the toll booths and moved completely to a tag or pay-by-mail system. The thing is, they knew that the auto-pay system was coming, yet they still spent millions on massive toll plazas. The word “boondoggle” doesn’t do this project justice.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > kanadanmajava1 04/20/2020 at 11:03

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I’m pretty sure the Japanese haven’t designed their latest, state of the art, train with pickup truck1s in mind.

Thing looks like a hybrid between a jet liner and an  LMP1 car.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > ttyymmnn 04/20/2020 at 11:22

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If I were Texas Central CEO , I’d go to the Dallas and Houston city councils and say “give us whatever you spend on your sucky public transportation and we give you a plan about on how to make it bigger and better, a plan that includes us taking over it ”. After that I’d get two fleets of efficient hybrid and electric buses and start making plans for expanding the local light rail systems.

After making a lot of money, I'd start making plans to replace said light rail system with a proper subway system to make room for cars, walkways and green stuff that produces oxygen. 

TheRealBicycleBuck > I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker 04/20/2020 at 11:23

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There are some areas where that is feasible. There are other areas where that is not feasible.

Full disclosure: I worked on some of the early right-of-way issues for the San Antonio to Dallas to OKC version of this. I’ve done the same thing in California and Louisiana. At-grade crossings, existing freight rail, local laws, and lack of right-of-way along the existing corridors (freeways) all come together to make these projects extremely complicated and expensive. The proposed route for the Baton Rouge to New Orleans express line has hundreds of at-grade crossings which would require controlled access gates, local laws which limit the speed, and many sensitive areas like schools close to the tracks. Building a whole new set of tracks parallel to the existing freight tracks would cost billions.

I took this picture at one of the local pools. This same rail line runs right next to the school my kids attended. Not a good place for high-speed rail, so the local laws limit the trains to 35 mph (if memory serves correctly).

I like cars: Jim Spanfeller is one ugly motherfucker > TheRealBicycleBuck 04/20/2020 at 11:30

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Wow. Yeah I was assuming that the whole thing would be a major PITA. Just goes to show the importance of urban planning as a community expands...

ttyymmnn > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 11:30

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Sounds like you have a future in urban planning.

NKato > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 12:00

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 That picture is a model. Lol... bullet trains don't turn that tightly. 

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > ttyymmnn 04/20/2020 at 12:06

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P robably not. But growing up in New York made me realize how important a good subway system is for a big city. And since I moved to Europe , more than 3 years ago, I got by without owning a car at all(sure I rent one sometimes when I need it, or just want to drive ). It’s so easy, everything you need is either near or just a short subway trip or tram trip or train trip or bus trip away. 

ttyymmnn > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 12:22

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My mom lived in Chicago and did not own a car. She would rent a car when we came to visit, but otherwise, she rode the El or the bus everywhere. I am envious of cities like NY and Paris that have such excellent trains. We were in NYC last December and getting anywhere was a snap. Sure, you had to walk a block or two to or from the station, but that was no big deal.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > ttyymmnn 04/20/2020 at 12:50

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H aven’t been to Chicago in years. I need get there when this is over. And to Boston. 

MrSnrub > El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! 04/20/2020 at 12:59

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I’d love to see this happen but I’ll believe it when I see it. As someone who lives in Austin and has family in Houston I’d love to get an Austin-Houston train, but that’s a pipe dream. An actual limited-access highway between the largest city in Texas and the capital of Texas would be nice in the meantime.

El Relámpago(LZone) - Humanity First! > MrSnrub 04/20/2020 at 15:42

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If the first line is successful, I don’t see why not. Could help football( err soccer)  too, as Texas seems to be the first state with 3 teams.