Quote:
Originally Posted by BevoLJ
Amtrak. =(
I can take a 8 hour train ride from my house in Austin to my sisters in Dallas and have no car when I get there, or drive for 3 hours and have my own car for the weekend. It's really a no-brainer.
Austin to Houston, again 9 hour train ride or 3 hour drive.
Dallas to Houston 15 hour train ride of 4 hour drive.
And in all cases it cost more for the longer rides than gas to drive.
Why would anyone in Texas have any faith in such a system? Not that it matters we all know it will know any investment of our taxes will be put in the North East like it always is.
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If Texas had followed the example of California, perhaps the plans for the Texas T-Bone HSR would be a lot further along. In the 90s, California put funding behind the Pacific Surfliner, Capitol Corridor, and San Joaquin corridor services. With incremental track improvements over the years in cooperation with the freight railroads and increases in frequency of service, the combined ridership for the 3 services in FY2010 was 5.17 million passengers. These are hardly high speed corridors, but they do get solid ridership numbers. If California did not have these train services, it is very unlikely that the planning and support for the CA HSR system would be where it is.
If Texas had or were to start a multiple daily frequency a day corridor service along the Texas Eagle route from San Antonio to Dallas as the starter line, that would be a first step. Texas did get funding from the Tiger and HSIPR grants for the Tower 55 project and to double track a portion of the Trinity Rail Express corridor, both of which will improve run times for the Amtrak Texas Eagle in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Follow it by starting corridor service between San Antonio to Houston and Dallas to Houston. Get state and federal funding for more incremental improvements for those corridors over time that both benefit passenger and freight rail.
If these corridor services can get up and running with decent run times that are better than the heavily padded long distance train schedules (padded to allow for freight delays) and achieve decent ridership numbers, that might tilt the political climate in Texas into getting serious about the Texas T-Bone HSR idea. On the other hand, if California and Florida can both get their HSR systems under advanced construction and the CA HSR system gets close to starting up on the first segment or 2 in the Valley, then Texas politicians might say, hey, what about us? We can't fall behind those damn left wing liberals in California!