Texas high-speed rail corridors under consideration
Posted on 06/18/2011 6:49:11 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Yesterday, Miller-McCune’s Michael Scott Moore accused Southwest Airlines of helping to bury a potential Texas bullet train 15 years ago.
“Southwest understood better than most high-speed rail critics just how well the trains could work,” Moore wrote. “[High-speed rail in Spain] has reduced Spanish highway traffic — even for cargo, by freeing up space on the older rail network — and it’s cut dramatically into domestic airline business.”
Miller-McCune quotes a 2006 story in The Austinist:
Dallas-based airline company Southwest Airlines launched a sweeping, aggressive public relations campaign throughout the state in order to discredit TGV and prevent the company from meeting its fundraising deadlines. Why? Because they dominated (and still dominate) the friendly skies between Dallas, Houston and San Antonio with a business plan identical to the one proposed by TGV. It was their monopolized turf. In a huge state with no other high-speed transportation options available, Southwest Airlines has always been the intra-Texas transport of choice for many people going from city to city who don’t want to make the long drives.
Regional air travel is a significant consideration when assessing a corridor’s potential for high-speed rail, since short-jump flights are so easily replaced with a train that goes as fast, provides more legroom, lets you skip long security lines, and begins and ends in downtowns (not far-flung airports). When America 2050 studied the best potential high-speed rail in the country, the report authors couldn’t help noticing, “Texas has a relatively large short haul air market, with 4.4 million passengers in 2008 moving between Dallas and other points in the Texas Triangle and Gulf Coast.” That factor helped several Texas corridors score high on America 2050’s ranking for rail potential.
The organization also noticed, “To accommodate its fast growing population, Texas has invested billions of dollars over the last decade adding more than 1,000 lane miles of highways and upgrading its major air terminals. Despite this, metropolitan congestion has continued to worsen and the change in congestion in the Houston and Dallas metro regions is among the worst in the nation over the last decade.”
Indeed, while the Miller-McCune story asks why high-speed rail has succeeded in Spain and flopped in Texas, the Austinist story begins with a different premise: Why was Texas (at the time the story was written) prepared to build a Trans-Texas Corridor at a cost of $184 billion, “usurp[ing] nearly 9,000 square miles of mostly privately-owned rural farmland” to build a super-corridor of roads, utility lines and rail 1,200 feet wide?
The Trans-Texas Corridor plan was scrapped last year by the Federal Highway Administration, but the Austinist story still makes a good point: Paralysis on the part of the states to build sophisticated rail networks could eventually lead to highway expansion. Currently, the Obama administration is pushing for a high-speed rail system to connect 80 percent of the U.S. population in 25 years, in part because they’re looking ahead at a 100 million person population increase in the U.S. over the next 40 years. Indeed, if the country doesn’t figure out some adequate way to move people by rail, the grinding traffic on the nation’s highways — and airways — could get far worse.
No.
Move the people via video conference.
Didn’t Spain spend over $1 Trillion on their high speed rail?
Nope!
The one envisioned here in KahleeFohneeYah is still not as fast me driving from San Jose to Los Angeles and it leaves when it wants to.
If I want to be in LA at 8 or 9 in the morning I get up and out of the door around 4 and I’m at my destination in about 4 hours. Provided I don’t see Smokey Bears along the way.
I also don’t have to looking for a rental car and then being far away from my destination have to drive that crazy traffic just to get there which can add another 1-1.5 hours.
I’d do it for convenience maybe, if I was going to rent a CLS Limo for the day but other than that I’d rather drive and just get there.
In short highspeed rail has all the disadvantages of airtravel but with none of the benefits.
High speed rail is totally unusable for me. I would have to drive 50 miles to catch a plane and high speed train would be more expensive. If a train stops to pick up passengers at each whistle stop it is not high speed. If it goes 50 miles or better between stops is does not serve the people.
Spain has 20% unemployment. Imagine how high it would be if they didn’t have those train related jobs!
I’ve traveled in Europe and you can’t beat high speed rail for intercity travel of under 500 miles. It’s clean, fast, and comfortable. Imagine having plenty of leg room and seat room, where you can get up and walk around, go to the bar to get a drink, have a meal at a table, meet new friends and talk without the aircraft engine noise, etc. You don’t have to get groped either, although I’ll admit, if TSA has their way you’ll have to be molested to ride a train, bus, barge, use a highway, or just to go to the local mall.
But, back to the subject. High speed rail is relaxing. You can work on your computer with high speed internet access throughout the train. If you want, you can have a private compartment with your own toilet facilities and even a bed for longer trips. This is really the way to travel for business or pleasure.
“Paralysis on the part of the states to build sophisticated rail networks could eventually lead to highway expansion”
Horrors!
Noithing like reverting to superceded, centuries old technologies.
Well, one benefit over air travel - at least, for now! :-)
You car can drive itself, if properly equipped.
20% unemployment? Must be all those ATMs in Spain...
RE: But, back to the subject. High speed rail is relaxing
No one is arguing that it isn’t relaxing or comfortable. The main question always boils down to this -— WHO PAYS FOR IT? How much will it cost suffering tax payers?
If they can find a magical way to make it profitable in the USA without burdening tax payers with more of their hard earned money, more power to them.
That won’t last long. You get a billion dollar rail car moving on down the line TSA will want to be there checking your rectum for hidden dynamite.
Is Spain even big enough for planes to fly in?
Here in New Mexico we are trying to figure out what to do with the low speed, wonder blunder Richardson left us with. At least a high speed train would have been fun.
The problem with big government infrastructure dreams is that the bills don’t go away after the dreamers leave office. If you can’t turn it into a profitable business, don’t do it. If it could be a profitable business, someone would have done it already.
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